Namibian Premiere: “Grey Matter” by Kivu Ruhorahoza, SAT 27 April 2013, 7 p.m., Goethe-Centre
On Saturday, 27 April 2013 at 7 pm AfricAvenir invites you to the Namibian Premiere of the award winning film, "Grey Matter“ (Rwanda, 2011, Original with English subtitles, 100 min) by Kivu Ruhorahoza. Grey Matter offers a rare narrative insight into the “burden of surviving” for multiple sectors of the Rwandan population. Kivu Ruhorahoza transformed his catharsis into a poignant representation of how genocide so deeply impacts individuals and how survivors manage to move on. nFor its audacious and experimental approach, this film speaks of recent horrors and genocide with great originality. The film Grey Matter reflects on the suffering of those who as children survived the Rwandan genocide. It denounces the mechanisms in which hatred and intolerance are created by media and eventually dehumanize human beings. This feature film shows, how it is important for small countries and their filmmakers to tell their own stories and to reflect on issues that they value the most. Written and directed by Kivu Ruhorahoza, Grey Matter is actually the first feature length narrative film made in Rwanda by a Rwandan filmmaker. nSynopsis
In the brisk, luminous serenity of middle-class Kigali, Balthazar (Hervé Kimenyi), a wry, intense young Rwandan filmmaker with a bookshelf full of Western classics and a head full of Western movies, prepares to make his first feature film, come what may, and muses about it into the lens of his video camera. Using this setup, the young Rwandan director Kivu Ruhorahoza offers a searing political view of the minor metropolis’s cultural modernity and modest prosperity. He shifts from Balthazar to clips of the film that Balthazar is making, which, to the displeasure of the authorities, turns out to be a devastating reflection on recent massacres and their enduring psychic traumas. Ruhorahoza suggests that such terrifying depictions of a society that’s sick with violence are incompatible with a forward-looking bureaucratic oblivion; his brilliant ending distills the paradoxes of a false normalcy into a single, stinging shot.nnPrizesn
- Winner Griot Award (Best Director), and SIGNIS Award for Best Feature Length Narrative Film, 9th Festival Cine de Africa, FCAT, Cordoba, Spain, 2012.
- Special Jury Mention for Best New Narrative Director, and Best Actor Award for Ramadhan “Shami” Bizimana, Tribeca Film Festival, New York, USA, 2011.
- Winner Ecumenical Jury Award, Special Mention, and Nominee for Grand Prix, Warsaw International Film Festival, Poland, 2011
nDate: Sat. 27. April
Time: 19h00
Entrance: 30,- N$
Venue: Goethe-Centre, AuditoriumnThe film series African Perspectives is supported by the Franco Namibian Cultural Centre, WhatsOnWindhoek, and the Goethe-Centre Windhoek.n© Copyright AfricAvenir 2013