Sometimes
In April
By
Tequila Minsky, Heritagekonpa Magazine
Retelling
the tragedy of the 100 days in Rwanda when 800,000 were massacred
The
latest film written and directed by
Raoul Peck approaches a subject of horrific
| | | |  |
| | | | Xavier
[Fraser James] and Augustin Muganza [Idris Elba], soldiers in the Rwandan Armed
Forces. Picture courtesy of HBO |
acts
of slaughter and loss of humanity. His previous filmmaking and life experiences
helped lay the foundation for this directorial effort. Sometimes in April retells
the tragedy of the 100 days-April 6-July 18, 1994--of the Rwandan genocide. It
is the first major film on this subject shot in Rwanda where the real-life events
transpired. Earlier this year the film screened to 30,000 people at the stadium
in Kigali, capital of Rwanda. HBO will air this film throughout March and early
April.
HBO
Films president Colin Callender approached Haitian-born Peck, after acquiring
his film Lumumba, and felt he was uniquely qualified to make an authentic film
and to tell the story of Rwandan characters who had experienced genocide. Peck
spent many years in the Congo after his family fled the Duvalier dictatorship.
He studied filmmaking in Berlin. No stranger to difficult subjects, the fabric
of other films of his such as The Man By The Shore and Haitian Corner is woven
with threads of fear, torture and political repression.
By
the second day of Raoul Peck’s first exploratory visit to Rwanda, he knew
the story
had to
be told. “I knew this story had to be very complex, multilayered and accurate.
Only so would it be possible to give a real feel for what happened in Rwanda in
1994 and the following 10 years.”
Archival
footage at the very beginning of the film sets the historical context—the
stage set by the Belgiums who created the rigid system of classifications that
separated Hutus and Tutsis, racially and ultimately socially. Then Sometimes in
April’s dramatic epic journey focuses on the experiences of a single Hutu
family.
Beginning
in April 2004 schoolteacher Augustin prepares to visit his estranged brother Honoré,
a former radio journalist on trial with the UN International Criminal Tribunal
for his part in inciting genocide with inflammatory broadcasts, broadcasts which
urged the Hutu population to get the “cockroaches.” The film flashes
back 10 years to another April, this time April 1994. Augustin’s Tutsi wife
senses the impending danger while Augustin is a captain in the Hutu government
army. The film continues with the build up of horrors. His wife, three children,
and Xavier, his moderate Hutu friend, flee and suffer the efforts to survive.
The terror of the ethnic cleansing during those 100 days encompass the story of
this family. TV footage shot during the genocide is also used.
The
script is dramatized by international actors and locals. Peck believes, “Drama
enables people to get into a subject emotionally in a quicker and deeper way.”
Some
of these actors lived through the actual events, some locations were where massacres
literally took place.
Sometimes
in April shows how genocide violence becomes normal. In adhering to authenticity
lines of dialogue are taken from witnesses’ testimony at the Tribunal. Every
depiction has its roots in actual events. Research, eyewitness accounts, reading
of public documents went into the script, Tutsis hid in the marshes and Tutsi
and Hutu schoolgirls took a stand against the militia and were murdered rather
than be separated. Today in Rwanda, in fact, relatives of victims and killers
really are neighbors. Peck reflects, “Life
must
go on.”
A
character in the film, a U.S. lawyer, agitates for western intervention and drives
home the inaction of the American administration.
Other
dramatic films have tackled the subject of genocide-- films on the Nazi holocaust,
Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the Armenian genocide. Sometimes in April also joins
other dramatic films that focus on Rwanda: 100 Days by British filmmaker (and
news cameraman) Nick Hughes, Oscar-nominated Hotel Rwanda, and soon-to-be-released
Shooting Dogs. From Peck’s point of view, the more that can be done to jolt
memories about genocide, the better.
Reflecting
his urgency Peck told Geoffrey Macnab of the British paper The Guardian, the monster
doesn’t come from nowhere. “You look aside the first time when someone
is slapped in public. You don’t say anything. The next day, they kill him
in front of you and you don’t say anything. Then, on the third day, they
can come and take your wife and rape your wife. And then it’s too late to
do anything. That is how the monster arrives. It starts with little things. And
then it’s too late for you to do anything.”
As
a filmmaker Peck grapples with the questions, “How do you film genocide?
What are aesthetic, moral, political, and historical challenges? How do you show
horror without making it unwatchable? Peck concludes, “Most of all I wanted
to try to explain, as much as it is possible in a film, the mechanics of genocide.
How does something like this happen? Why is there still no response for these
tragedies of unimaginable proportions such as we are witnessing today in Darfur
region in Sudan?”
Sometimes
in April opened the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in London in mid-March. At
least 35 million people will see it on HBO screenings in March/April (check HBO’s
schedule). In April, the film will also air on PBS.
HBO
schedule
