Remembering Lumumba

>> Raoul Peck directs a brilliant tribute to a forgotten African folk hero

by SIOBHAN O'CONNOR

Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck punctuates his thoughts with sentences like "This is the truth" and "This is fact," something that could easily be mistaken for a condescending quirk or a subtle rhetorical tactic. What becomes clear very quickly, though, is that the filmmaker--whose latest film Lumumba is a biopic of Patrice Lumumba, a folk hero for African independence and, briefly in 1960, the first prime minister of independent Congo--has spent ample time thinking about just about every possible curve ball you could throw at him, every side of the story he's telling.

So intent is he on "the truth" that in one brilliant scene, Peck shows off his incredible attention to detail with a recreation of the famous photograph of Lumumba's successor, Mobutu, being sworn in, leopard-print hat cocked a little to the right, smug grin on his lips.

While it becomes apparent in conversation that Lumumba (brilliantly rendered by Eric Ebouaney) is something of a hero for Peck, his latest film is anything but a cloying one-sided vindication of his rule. "I didn't want to deal with the mythical or heroic side of Lumumba," says Peck. "What was more efficient was to show that Lumumba was just a man, a modest man with good qualities and failings. It was the same with Mobutu. I didn't want to show him as the bad guy; I wanted to show a young man with ambition who could have made contrary decisions but unfortunately didn't."

Shortly before his brutal assassination by the Belgians (depicted in gory detail in the harrowing first scene of the film), Lumumba was double-crossed by his friend Mobutu, who staged a coup d'état and stepped up as a war lord, taking charge of the territory for the next three decades. Mobutu proceeded to become the richest man in Africa and a buddy of Ronald Reagan's, essentially undoing all the progress Lumumba had made in his two-month rule.

Peck had some difficulty making Lumumba but he is no stranger to these kinds of "industry hassles." In the early '90s, when Mobutu was still in power and support from the Belgian government was unthinkable, Peck had trouble finding support for his documentary on the same subject. "This is a reality that black filmmakers face because we are confronted with an industry that is basically male, white and very American or Eurocentric. So it's always a fight, particularly if it's a black main character, an almost totally black cast and a political subject."

Showing Lumumba as a rabblerouser, a father and a dissident, the film is peppered with powerful and lively scenes in village centres where he delivered his famous speeches, at home with his wife and at diplomatic round-tables. Unlike many films in the genre, Peck stays behind the scenes, telling the kind of story that is more aptly called a "people's history" than capital-h History.

"I want the film to be a reminder to ask questions to the responsible Western countries because this is not only an African story," says Peck. "Belgians, Americans and the CIA were instrumental in the establishment of Mobutu as the leader of Congo, and Congo today is a direct result of that. More than anything, I wanted to make a film so that people can no longer say 'I didn't know.'"

Lumumba opens Friday, July 6