Compared cultural Studies Research Group Seminar
The Ruanda genocide in cinema: absence, represenation, manipulation

Fabrice Schurmans, CES doctoral student

February 12th, 2010, 17:00, CES Seminar Room, 2nd Floor, Coimbra

Presentation

Cinema, as any other Media, is likely to show overt or latent tendencies of the society in which it is produced, that is, it may, by its content, describe in part the  referred society (the overt). Nonetheless, it often insinuates more than it intends to mean. It is the critic’s job to reveal this latent side of cinema, resorting so much to the analysis of the film discourse, as to History, Sociology or, in other words, it is his job to articulate social and human sciences in order to practice a hermeneutics of the film.
In this contribution I seek to analyse some fiction films that were produced regarding the genocide in Ruanda between 2004 and 2006. I shall attempt to demonstrate that the films of directors from the North – Hotel Rwanda (Canada, Great-Britain, Italy, 2005) by Terry George (Great-Britain), Shooting Dogs (Germany, Great-Britain, 2006) by Michael Caton-Jones (Great-Britain) and Un dimanche à Kigali (Canada, 2006) by Robert Favreau (Canada) –, if, on the one hand, describe in a fairly faithful manner the genocide in its technical features (large scale civilian massacres carried out by other civilians with axes and other agricultural tools), they tend to avoid questioning its immediate or historic origins.  Through the analysis of the characters of the cinematographic discourse, I also aspire to show how some of these movies put the white man in the centre of the picture (and script), reducing the black man to a secondary role, in its margins, ending up by (re)producing and Africanist and Eurocentric ideology. I shall also try to show how and for what reasons the aesthetics of a given television discourse influenced part of the chosen corpus. Finally, I turn to the movies Sometimes in April (USA, 2004) by Raoul Peck (Haiti) and La nuit de la vérité (France, Burkina-Faso, 2004) by Fanta Regina Nacro (Burkina-Faso), counter-hegemonic suggestions that come from directors from the South representing alternative visions on the events at stake, a more nuanced version, and also more concerned with the local realities.

 
Biographic note

Fabrice Schumans is a doctoral student in Post-colonialisms and Global Citizenship at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra (dissertation: “The tragedy of the postcolony” under supervision of Margarida Calafate Ribeiro and  Roberto Vecchi). Holds a degree in Romance Philology (1990) and in Arts and Sciences of communication (1993) at the University of Liège (Bélgium). Holds a master in Modern and Contemporary Romance Literatures (2002) at the University of  Porto (dissertation: “Michel de Ghelderode. Une tragédie de l’identité.”). Taught French as foreign language in Liège (1991-1994), Coimbra (1994-2000) and Viana do Castelo (2000-2006). Since 2005 is co-organizer of the cycle “Filmes Falados” of the Encontros de Cinema of Viana do Castelo.

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