Telegraphe Congolais

One filmmaker's apocalypse

For the past two days we shot "Prejudice," a film written and directed by Horeb Bulambo, the communications director for Worldvision in Goma. The shoot... it was something. ("Mistah Kurtz... he dead.")

If you ever shoot a short film in the eastern Congo, don't do it like we did. Don't use a cousin of the general of the province as an actress, because it will mean dodging all AK-47 and grenade-launcher toting soldiers because "Mireille isn't supposed to be out without her bodyguards."

Don't shoot the key prison scene in an Italian Catholic orphanage housing 1600 reformed street kids, because all 1600 will want to participate/ try to make you eat their snot (some of those kids were tough). Don't shoot a dialogue scene in a moving vehicle on a lava road through a "bad" (bad for Goma!!) part of town and drive slowly enough for every kid in the neighborhood to jump on/in the car.

Try to finish before dark (curfew!) / before the tsunami.

As for the film, BJ and Nelson, who are in film school, just laugh when I ask them about it. A pity: the acting was some of my finest work.

posted by LouisAntoine @ 3:29 AM