LUMUMBA - TOD DES PROPHETEN (LUMUMBA - LA MORT DU PROPHÈTE)

Lumumba is an essay-portrait of a legendary figure in modern African history. Described as a giant, a prophet or a devil, Patrice Emery Lumumba became the first democratically elected Prime Minister of independent Congo in 1960. In the short two months of his period of office, amidst a terrible crisis that raged in the state, he did more for the national unity of his country and for the independence of Africathan any other politicians after him: he lost his life for it. He was assassinated on January, 17^th 1961.

More than thirty years later, acclaimed director Raoul Peck who was born in Haitiand spent some of his childhood in Kinshasa, deals with the person and the myth of Lumumba who has become an icon of the African independence movement. He mixes archive documentary footage and the memories of Belgian politicians and of journalists who reported from the Congo at that time with his own home movies and childhood memories in a kind of puzzle. This is a deeply personal reflection about remembering and forgetting as well as a critical stock-taking of the moral, political and ethnic responsibility of the media.

Awards: Amiens 1991; Grand Prix du documentaire, Fribourg 1991; Prix de la Procirep, Cinéma du Réel, Paris 1992; Best Documentary, Montréal 1992

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