|
 RAOUL
PECK, Haiti (not
attending)
:: Lumumba
::
(Please
note that although Mr. Peck is unable to attend, both a filmmaker
and a University lecturer from Congo (Zaire) will be attending the
screening to answer questions from the audience)
In
1961, Raoul Peck’s parents fled the Duvalier dictatorship,
finding asylum and a new life in the recently independent Republic
of Congo, which became their second home for nearly 25 years.
Raoul Peck attended school there, then later in Brooklyn, NY and
finally Orleans, France. He then studied economics and industrial
engineering in Germany, before working for one year as a taxi
driver in New York City while awaiting his acceptance at the
German Film and Television Academy (DFFB) in Berlin in 1984. While
a student at the DFFB, Peck completed his first award-winning
full-length feature – for $150,000 – Haitian Corner,
shot in Brooklyn and in Haiti. Other projects soon followed,
establishing him as one of the most prominent and prolific black
filmmakers.
Between 1982
and 1990, Peck worked on numerous development projects in Europe
and in Africa. He taught at a number of Film Schools in Berlin,
Paris and New York. He returned to Haiti as Minister of Culture in
the government of Prime Minister Rosny Smarth after the
restoration of democratic rule, resigning after eighteen months.
He left behind a number of development projects, most importantly
the groundwork for the first National Cultural Plan Directive.
Peck resumed his career as a filmmaker with the award-winning,
documentary Lumumba - Death of a Prophet (1992) and Man
by the Shore (1993), the first Caribbean film to be selected
in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
Awards
include the 1994 Nestor Alemendros and the 2001 Irene Diamond
Lifetime Achievement Award from the Human Rights Watch
Organization. He has been decorated with the Honor and Merit Order
(Knight) in Haiti and the Order of Arts and Literature (Knight) in
France.
.
 LUMUMBA
(Rated PG)
Countries:
France/Belgium/Haiti/Germany
Year: 2000
Length: 115 minutes,
Language: French with English subtitles
Genre: Historical Feature
Lumumba
is a gripping political thriller that tells the story of the
legendary African leader Patrice Emery Lumumba. Called "the
politico of the bush" by journalists of his day, the
brilliant and charismatic Lumumba, rose rapidly to the office of
Prime Minister when Belgium conceded the Congo's independence in
June, 1960. 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. The architects
behind Lumumba's brutal death in 1961, a mere nine months after
becoming the country's first Prime Minister, recently became known
and are dramatized for the first time in Lumumba.
Awards
and prizes for LUMUMBA include:
-
Best
Film, Pan African Film Festival LA 2001
-
Paul
Robeson Award, Fespaco 2001
-
Best
Film, Santo Domingo International Film Festival 2000
-
Audience
Prize, Best Actor, Jury Prize, Grand Prize OCIC, 11th African
Film Festival, Milan Italy, 2001
-
Best
Film by A Foreign Director, Acapulco Black Film Festival 2001
External Link related to Raoul Peck and Lumumba
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