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Mweze Ngangura, Congo

 :: Pièces d’Identités (1998) :: 

Screening: Friday, October 15 at 8.30 p.m.
Meet the Director:  Thursday, October 16 from 10.00 a.m. - 12.00 p.m.

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The Director:

Mweze Ngangura was born in Bokavu in 1950. He studied cinema at the Institut des Arts et Diffusion (IAD) in Brussels. After his studies he returned to Zaire and became a fellow in three higher education institutes of Kinshasa. In 1980 he made his first documentary CHERI SAMBA, the portrait of a young popular painter from Kinshasa. Then came KIN KIESSE on the sweet and sour joys of Kinshasa la Belle. Followed by the writing and co directing of LA VIE EST BELLE in 1985. To preserve his independence, he founded Sol'Oeil Films in Kinshasa and Film Sud in Brussels and assumes the production delegation of all his films since.

The Film:

Pièces d’Identités (1998)
(Pieces of Identity)

Country: Congo/Belgium
Running Time: 93 mins
Language: French with English subtitles 
Genre: Comedy

Mweze Ngangura’s first feature, La Vie est Belle (Life is Beautiful), released in 1987, remains to this day one of the most accessible and entertaining African films ever made. Starring soukous super star, Papa Wemba, it uses the rags to riches story of a Congolese musician to demonstrate that ordinary Africans are capable of joy and that Africa has its own vibrant contemporary popular culture.

Ngangura’s second film takes us from Kinshasa to a vibrant African immigrant community in Brussels. At first glance, Pièces d'Identités looks like a modern fairy tale: the timeless story of an old king, his beautiful daughter, a ‘dragon’ and the prince charming who rescues them; it even has a happy ending. At the same time, Ngangura's simple fable raises some of the most troubling issues of identity facing people of African descent in the ever-widening Diaspora of the late 20th century.

The plot: Mani Kongo, the venerable king of the Bakongo, sets out alone on a quest for his long-lost daughter, Mwana, whom he sent to Belgium to study medicine many years before. As soon as he leaves his village he faces challenges to his identity. In Kinshasa, young urban trend-setters mistake the king's royal fetishes for the latest fashion statement, while customs officials try to confiscate them as imported art objects. Eventually, robbed, homeless and penniless, Mani Kongo is tricked into pawning his royal regalia, literally his "pieces of identity," to an unscrupulous art dealer. (Ironically the authentic headdress used in the film had to be borrowed from a Belgian antique shop.)

The villain of this tale will be Europe itself, represented by a group of  white mercenaries and freebooters who meet at the Katanga Bar in Brussels, to reminisce about the good old days of colonial exploitation. The film is unflinching in showing the daily indignities Africans face at the hands of racist police and ordinary citizens. But it is also nuanced enough to show some decent white people in the working class boarding house where Mani Kongo finally finds refuge.

While Mani Kongo has only temporarily lost his ID, the younger generation in the film finds itself adrift in Europe without ever having had one. Mwana (aka Amanda) has just been released from jail for drug-running and is forced to take a job in a strip club where Africans act out Europeans' lurid fantasies of the other. She is pursued by a small-time, designer-clad hustler, Viva wa Viva, and eventually rescued by a mulatto cabdriver, a Robin Hood who holds up dressed as a Congolese warrior. He is played by Jean-Louis Daulne, composer of the film's infectious musical soundtrack, which includes a cameo by Papa Wemba.

While these young African characters express their confusion about their identity by inventing names for themselves, Noubia, a young woman of a different sort, appears to Mani Kongo as an apparition representing an African Renaissance. She shows Mani Kongo the forgotten graves of Congolese brought to Belgium a century before to amuse the King. In her rap (an urban idiom with African roots), she names Mani Kongo as a "messenger" calling all of Africa's prodigal children back to their father's house.

Ngangura seems to be urging educated young Africans to return and rebuild the continent. The way the film restores all the characters to their proper identities through its underlying moral force has the simplicity of myth. Although critics might label Pièces d'Identités "escapist" entertainment, we might ask why Africans should have to see only "militant" political films? Don’t African audiences have a right to "escapism" too? Ngangura says: "I am a modern African. But I still believe in my culture and my ancestors. So I am very interested in making popular African films."

Winner of the most prestigious award in African cinema: the Etalon de Yennenga at FESPACO 99.