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 Rwanda genocide film revives painful memories for survivors
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Rwanda genocide film revives painful memories for survivors
Mon Mar 27, 2006 3:40 PM GMT
By Arthur Asiimwe
KIGALI (Reuters) - A new film about the 1994 Rwandan genocide was being premiered in Kigali on Monday amid fears it was stirring up painful memories for survivors weeks ahead of the 12th anniversary of the massacre.
Michael Caton-Jones, director of "Shooting Dogs", said his film, which criticises the failure of western powers to intervene and halt the killings, was meant to give western audiences a better understanding of what happened.
"The film was intended to raise questions," he told Reuters before its premiere in Kigali's Amahoro stadium where hundreds sought refugee during the massacre.
The film, starring John Hurt and Hugh Dancy, tells the story of a Catholic priest and a teacher caught up in the genocide in which extremists from the Hutu majority shot, hacked and beat to death 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.
But a Rwandan genocide survivor group said the film had re-traumatised survivors who were involved as extras.
"The movie regenerates the memory because of the degree of slaughter portrayed," Wilson Gabo, a co-ordinator for Survivors' Fund for Rwanda, told Reuters.
"It has caused trauma to many of the survivors who took part in the shooting, including school-going children."
Gabo said three schools were forced to close down and many student survivors with roles in the movie were still scarred by the experience with some refusing to go back to class.
Actor Dancy defended the film.
"I hope the survivors see it as an honest and a serious attempt to understand what happened and not to try to make an entertaining film about something horrible," he told Reuters.
"If you're going to address that period of history, then there'll be moments that are terrible because that is the truth."
"Shooting Dogs" refers to the UN troops' habit of firing at dogs eating corpses that littered the streets of Kigali during the 100 days of slaughter.
The film, one of the few to be shot in Rwanda, depicts the massacre at the Ecole Technique Officielle in Kigali where at least 2,500 Tutsi men, women and children took refuge during the initial days of the genocide.
The school was under the protection of the United Nations peacekeeping force until it pulled out during the first weeks of April 1994, taking white Europeans along with them.
Within hours after they left, most of the refugees had been slaughtered by Hutu militias known as Interahamwe.
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Re: Rwanda genocide film revives painful memories for survivors (Re: Khalid Kodi)
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وسيأتى دور السودان.
Anger at BBC genocide film
Survivors were 'traumatised' after being used as extras in a re-creation of the Rwanda killings
Alice O'Keeffe, arts and media correspondent
Sunday March 19, 2006
The Observer
A BBC-funded film about the Rwandan genocide billed as an 'authentic re-creation' of a real-life story, is facing criticism for exacerbating the trauma experienced by genocide survivors.
Backed by the Rwandan government, shot on location in the country and to be premiered there this week, Shooting Dogs was intended to raise awareness of the conflict. Aid organisations are now saying that it was a shot with a lack of sensitivity so soon after the events.
The film, which stars Hugh Dancy and John Hurt, tells the story of a massacre at a school, L'Ecole Technique Officielle, during the genocide in 1994. It includes scenes in which machete-wielding Interahamwe militia close in on the building, hacking women and children to death. It was filmed where the atrocity took place, using many local people, including genocide survivors, as extras and members of the crew.
Aid workers have expressed concern that some local people were traumatised by witnessing the reconstruction. On one occasion, students from a nearby school had to be taken to hospital and sedated when they suffered flashbacks after overhearing the chants and whistles of the angry mob. One member of the crew suffered a breakdown when he was taken back to the street where he had been forced to hide down a manhole for three months to escape the killers.
'In Rwanda, if you see a machete being wielded it doesn't matter if it's for a film - it seems real,' said Mary Kayitesi Blewitt, director of the UK-based Rwandan charity Survivors' Fund. 'When the shoot was over, we had to step up trauma counselling. It took some people six months to overcome the anxiety, fear and paranoia.'
Like two other recent films about the genocide - Sometimes in April and Hotel Rwanda - Shooting Dogs is due to be screened in Kigali this month.
'We're providing pamphlets and counselling to prepare people for seeing it,' said Blewitt. 'What really hurts is that the BBC will be making money from the film, but it has not put a penny into the organisations dealing with all this.'
A Unicef spokesman said: 'It's important to highlight issues like the Rwandan conflict, but reliving these experiences can be traumatic for children and we encourage journalists and others who work with survivors to adhere to our guidelines.'
David Belton, who wrote and produced Shooting Dogs, said that he 'deeply regretted' the incident with the students. 'We took great pains to avoid local people being confronted with the disturbing scenes, and had two trauma counsellors and medical staff on hand.
'I have been in close communication with the Rwandan government and organisations working there since we left, and none of them has mentioned any subsequent problems. We made the film in Rwanda because the Rwandans wanted us to. They were appalled that Hotel Rwanda was filmed in South Africa, with South African actors.'
Helen Bamber, director of the Helen Bamber Foundation for conflict survivors, criticised the decision not to vet any of the extras about their involvement in the 1994 massacre. Those who were likely to have perpetrated the killing, mainly from the Hutu tribe, were cast alongside their Tutsi victims. 'Who knows what kind of emotions that stirred up for the victims, and what kind of tensions it left behind?'
· Linda Melvern, author of A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide, argues in The Observer today that the film is inaccurate and misrepresents the BBC's role in reporting the atrocities. David Thompson, head of BBC Films, disputed this. 'As with all dramas there is some degree of artistic licence
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Khalid Kodi
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست