Tuesday, April 8, 2003

History and Consequences Film Series

Lumumba

Presented in coordination with the Masters in Peace & Justice Studies Students at USD.

The movie tells the story of charismatic political leader Patrice Lumumba, the man who helped lead Congo to independence from Belgium in the late 1950s and then became the country's first prime minister. Lumumba's vision of a united Africa gained him powerful enemies: the Belgian authorities, who wanted a much more paternal role in their former colony's affairs, and the CIA, who supported Lumumba's former friend Joseph Mobutu in order to protect U.S. business interests in Congo's vast resources and their upper hand in the Cold War power balance. During the tenuous first six months of Congo's independence when civil war threatened to erupt, Lumumba tried to quell hostilities but was eventually betrayed by his own political allies. Using newly discovered historical evidence, Haitian-born and late Congo-raised writer and director Raoul Peck renders an emotional and tautly woven account of Lumumba, a former mail clerk with a flair for oratory and an uncompromising belief in the capacity of his homeland to build a prosperous nation independent of its former Belgium overlords.

Directed by: Raoul Peck

Starring: Eriq Ebouaney, Alex Descas, Théophile Sowié, Maka Kotto.

Produced by: Jacques Bidou.

Followed by a panel discussion moderated by a MA in Peace and Justice Studies Student.