VARIOUS: FILM MAKERS NICK HUGHES AND ERIC KABERA PROMOTE THEIR FILM "100 DAYS" ABOUT THE RWANDA 1994 GENOCIDE

Record ID: 550013

  • Title: VARIOUS: FILM MAKERS NICK HUGHES AND ERIC KABERA PROMOTE THEIR FILM "100 DAYS" ABOUT THE RWANDA 1994 GENOCIDE
  • Date: 13th November 2001
  • Summary: (REUTERS - FILE) BODIES LYING ON STREET/ MEN HACKING AT BODIES
  • Embargoed: 28th November 2001 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: KIBUYE, RWANDA / LONDON, UK / NAIROBI, KENYA
  • City:
  • Country: Rwanda United Kingdom
  • Topics: Conflict
  • Reuters ID: LVA2E4MC7IGM5C50GO6TV3S7C24E
  • Story Text: "100 Days" , the long awaited feature film about the 1994 Rwanda genocide is completed and being shown to audiences at film festivals around the world. Recently, it premiered at the the annual Raindance Film Festival in London.
    Director Nick Hughes was there to present the film and spoke to Reuters about why he felt so compelled to make it.
    Baptiste and Josette are two young lovers, crazy about each other, hearts overflowing with day-dreams and happiness. A life together lies endlessly before them.
    The year is 1993, the place is Rwanda, but for the lovers, it could be anywhere.
    A year later, their dream is brutally shattered.
    Baptiste flees from an army of killers and devotes his life to fighting them. Josette stays behind. When they find each other again, she is heavy with child - she was raped by the priest who saved her life.
    Theirs is just one story out of a million - and it's not even a real one at that.
    Josette and Baptiste are characters in a film. You don't see either of them killed or maimed: You don't see what Rwandans saw - every day.
    irector Nick Hughes says "The Rwandan genocide became known as the genocide of 100 days - of three months - and during that time the interahamwe, the killers, were killing people four times faster than the Nazis were killing in the 2nd world war, they were killing 30-40000 people a day. What you see in 100 days is true. However extraordinary. It doesn't tell though the true horror of the genocide, I don't think anyone would go to the cinema to see a film that shows something so horrific. So it does try to bring out the human nature, bring out the emotion of the genocide."
    Ever since he saw the killings happen in 1994, Nick Hughes knew that he had to make this film.
    After working on 10 documentaries about the genocide, he wrote a script which tells the stories he'd seen through the lives of a small set of people - a Tutsi family, a priest, a UN peacekeeper, a Hutu killer.
    He found a producer in Rwanda who shared his vision.
    Eric Kabera says "It's just a matter of keeping the memory alive you know. It's a human story. It's something which is tragic and quite dramatic - it's basically a lesson to the Rwandan people and to the world entirely: To say that something like that happened to people, not animals."
    For both of them, there was never any question that the film should be made anywhere but Rwanda.
    They chose Kibuye, a remote town far from any tarmac road. They took their electricity off the street lights, so the town went dark whenever they filmed at night.
    Cast and Crew were mostly Rwandan. When Hughes gave them their parts, he deliberately ignored their ethnic groups.
    Says Hughes "You will find Hutu genocidaires being played by Tutsis and a Rwandan audience might pick up on that but I don't think anyone else would. And you will also find Tutsi playing Hutus. And that worked very well, it was the only way to do it, I'm not going to start separating people out.
    The Rwandan cast had never acted before - and some had never even been to a cinema. So the casting was a bit of a gamble - but the result is remarkable.
    Says Hughes "We just found those children the day before, they had a few hours to work with the acting coach and they gave an extraordinary performance, people cry when they see that scene. I can't explain how those children gave that performance."
    Spectators might be lost for words when they see the emotional force on screen - but for all the actors, it came naturally. They were, after all, playing on a real set - in and around the church, 15.000 people had been massacred only four years before.
    Rwandan Actor Dr. Claude Shema says "I've come here to play a criminal - but I was a victim. It takes time to get used to that, a lot of time. I have to tell you that I've spent three nights in hole, with dead bodies all around me."
    Kenyan Actor and UN Peacekeeper David Mulwa says "With these people there was almost like I mean deep within myself there was almost like a feeling of reverence for them. I don't know how to express it but you act with someone and it's like you were here, in your mind you are saying you were here, brother, sister, you were here."
    The film is finished, and now they need to find someone who will buy it. So Hughes and Kabera are taking it on a tour of the world's film festivals, Their first stop was the Raindance Festival of Independent Cinema in London.
    Hughes says "Of course, what's really important for the film is that it should be taken up from festivals, and that it should be taken up by distributors - and that's the difficult thing. Because this is a film this is a film about black Africans and it's a film about genocide - not the sort of thing that distributors really immediately are attracted to. But we really need people to say now this is an important film, it tells an important history, our history, and take it up and show it.
    Maybe not just for commercial reasons."
    It's already made an impact - especially on the Rwandans living in exile who flocked to see the film.
    This man says "I can recognise myself in that movie.
    Even I can recognise my family, what's happened. It is my country, I know very well my country."
    This woman says "It's important so that people know it happened to people like them. It was a girl like my age, children, a family with children, it was not only Hutus and Tutsis, it was people."
    But the ultimate aim of "100 days" isn't to preach to the converted, but to change something, however small, within those who didn't care.
    Hughes says "The lesson that has been learnt from the Rwandan genocide is it will happen again, somewhere else, to other people, and yes, then the international community will again do nothing. And those groups that are responsible, they will have no feeling of guilt. And if you don't have that feeling of guilt, you can't then learn, you can't then go forward and say this won't happen again."
    "100 days" is a work of fiction, not a documentary.
    But that is precisely where its impact lies - it puts a human face on what happened. For anyone who watches it, no matter how far away they were when the genocide happened, it becomes a personal tragedy.
    Which means that if it does happen again somewhere else, it might be just that little bit more difficult for the world to simply look the other way.
    ENDS
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