June 17, 2001
Raoul Peck's "Lumumba" Surmounts Past Film Tradition
In Treatment Of Black Heroes In World History
By Elombe Brath
Far too often whenever Black people are invited to go
to the movies what is on the screen is an embarrassment,
disparaging us and our historical legacy. This has been
particularly true with the many comedies that seem to
dominate the Black film presentations, mocking and making
fun of the lives of the masses of our people. This includes
movies even produced and directed by highly talented members
of the African community and feature Black actors and
actresses. But the dilemma does not only impact on film
comedies. it is also true of dramatic films where real-life
heroes have had their lives misappropriated to be misused as
central figures in white produced cinematic features to give
a film some exotic or esoteric flavor. This goes back to at
least the 1930's, where the historical great king of the
Congo, the Mani-Congo, was dehumanized when Hollywood moguls
took so-called artistic license and transformed him into a
gigantic gorilla which they called King Kong, and
transferred the setting from central Africa to an offshore
island, initiating a spin-off series of movies that
denigrated the history of Africa's third largest country and
its people.
There was also a humiliating portrayal of Tshaka, the great
19th century Zulu king whose brilliant military strategies
were later taught to U.S. Army officers at West Point. In
contrast to Tshaka's acknowledged role in world history, his
characterization in the insulting defamatory film entitled
Untamed was distorted and reduced to that of an African
Tonto-like assistant to Hollywood's glamour-boy screen star
Tyrone Powers, with Tshaka fighting against his own people
on behalf of the European settlers who would go on to
misrule South Africa for at least 86 years.
We also see such manipulation of historical figures in The
Mummy Returns, the latest edition in a series of "Mummy"
movies which traditionally has defiled Egypt's glorious
culture. From Hollywood's early Boris Karloff (1932), Turhan
Bey "tana leaf" horror film editions to its current
multi-million dollar blockbuster production, where the
genius Imhotep of ancient KMT (Kemit) is featured as an
irate Caucasoid madman, we can clearly see a pattern to use
film production as a propaganda tool to subliminally promote
white superiority consensus through control of the most
dominant vehicle - the motion picture industry - to mold
American popular culture.
Even the slight misinformation that was exposed in Steven
Steilberg's Amistad, particularly his film treatment of the
valiant Sierra Leonean Mende prince Cinque (i.e. Sengbe
Tieh) and the melodramatic romanticization of the film's
paternalistic white characters during that historic period,
which seemed to cause more stress in the African community
than admiration for at least the super star director having
chose to produce the film in the first place. And now the
latest use of another historical Black figure in "Pearl
Harbor", that of Dorie Miller - a battleship steward (played
by Cuba Gooding, Jr.) who rose to the occasion and became an
extraordinary real-life navy hero during the December 7,
1941 bombing of the U.S. Hawaiian naval base, whose heroics
made him the surviving equivalent of Crispus Attucks's role
of a martyr when he was killed at Boston Commons on March 5,
1770, which became a cause celebre that helped the
then-British colonial subjects later ignite the American
revolutionary war.
Dorie Miller's incredible courage, in spite of U.S. racism
barring him from being trained for combat, to come up from
the galley and seize an anti-aircraft battle station and
shoot down several attacking Japanese airplanes astounded
the navy officers. As Quincy Boykin, a Dorie Miller
enthusiast and history buff, points out, although Miller was
awarded the Navy Cross (many believe he should have been
given the Medal of Honor, the country's highest honor which
is given by Congress) for his valor by Admiral Chester
Nimitz, the commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet
during World War II, shortly after what President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt declared a "day of infamy", the real infamy
was that Miller was never given a commensurate rank for his
achievement above that of a mess attendant. He would be
later killed in 1943 when a torpedo fired by a Japanese
submarine sunk the U.S. navy vessel he was aboard - still
serving meals, but with the U.S. Navy's second highest medal
pinned on his chest.
Nevertheless, Miller's historic achievement is only included
in the film (admittingly described as "romantic adventure)
now showing only to give some substance and credibility to
the generally panned $140 million Disney [along with 13
other listed producers] three hour movie which grossed $75.1
million (over half of its production costs), over its
Memorial Day weekend opening - the second-largest box-office
sales record opening in film history.
I could offer other examples of the historical abuse, misuse
- and even often actual miscasting of white people to play
the role - of heroic Black figures in history for popular
entertainment, but I don't really find it necessary to do
so. The point I am raising is that our portrayal in film
habitually has left a lot to be desired.
But just when you might have thought that maybe you
shouldn't go to the movies anymore comes a film that is a
real must-see. The Haitian filmmaker and director Raoul
Peck's "Lumumba" is a film that not only must be seen but
also must be supported by our community to show future
producers and directors that we will patronize films that
faithfully portray our roles in world history if they make
them. Raoul Peck has done that and his film Lumumba
documents the extraordinary contributions and self-sacrifice
that the 1960's Congolese leader Patrice Emery Lumumba made
in attempting to safeguard the territorial integrity of the
Congo and protect its tremendous wealth against the
avaricious greed and overwhelming odds arrayed against him
by the United States of America and its allies.
The fact that Peck's Lumumba deals with a particularly
sensitive, contemporary nefarious part of U.S. history that
is still ongoing to this very day speaks volumes to the
director's integrity as a filmmaker and is all the more
reason that all people, but particularly the Black
community, who claim that they want to see films that
reflect the character of cinema verite, must ensure that it
has a spectacular opening and a good run so that as many of
our people can see this brilliant and majestic work as
possible. It is of vital importance that more of us become
conscious of the real motivations of U.S. foreign policies
and how the machinations to reach their objectives are
accomplished. In regards to this factor alone, Lumumba is
very instructive in illuminating how the U.S. and its allies
actually undermine democracy in African states, destabilize
fledgling governments, and help to create a mythical
consensus that the final failed result is blamed on the
targeted African country itself because they were not yet
ready for self-government in the post-World War II period.
Moreover, these tactics are time-tested and have been proven
to work. For instance, any serious study of the U.S. and
Western Europe's historical role in Africa would have you
believe that the continent which gave civilization and
government to the world is now populated by a people who had
no history and are innately inferior and thus incapable of
understanding either the political, social or hard sciences
unless supervised minutely by white people, or even
monitored by non-black-non-whites. Because undetected covert
operations by so-called western "counterintelligence
agencies are able to stealthily undermine African
governments and make them appear to be ungovernable, such
devious actions simultaneously foster the bogus notion that
once the European colonialists are forced to leave and the
African is left to depend his or her own initiative, then
they automatically slide back to atavism, stagnating any
further progress until the "good white father" returns to
rescue them through recolonization and bring them back up to
speed.
To review what happened after the independence of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo on June 30, 1961 is to
observe a classic case of the above description of the role
that foreign intrigue plays in the subversion of the dreams
and aspirations of the Congolese people. This is still a
source of discontent that haunts the second Democratic
Republic of Congo today. In my view, It is not just a casual
coincidence that the DRC's late president, Laurent Kabila,
was assassinated one day short of the 40th anniversary of
the assassination of his mentor Patrice Lumumba. And as more
is revealed in due time, mark my words: the same forces that
initiated the brutal murder of Patrice Lumumba in 1961,
along with the killing of two of his closest aides, Joseph
Okito, the head of the Congolese Senate and Maurice Mpolo,
the Minister of Youth and Sports, as seen in the film, will
be exposed as having spawned the current sinister cabal that
engineered Laurent Kabila's murder five months ago. And all
of this I believe can be readily understood after seeing
Raoul Peck's revelatory new film.
Why am I so enthusiastic about this film? Well, as one who
has been involved with African liberation struggles for over
the last 40 years in general and the Congo in particular,
and thus being reasonably cognizant of many of its hidden
dynamics that shaped the outcome in the film reveals, I can
bear witness that Mr. Peck has directed a great and honest
film. This film will surely help to direct our attention to
the role of covert so-called anti-Communist activities by
western nations led by the United States as being nothing
less than insidious Cold War ploys that are projected merely
for the benefit of western capitalist monopoly interests. As
I have pointed out in the past, the U.S. wasn't able to
establish its government until 13 years after its
declaration of independence in 1776, and from 1789 until
1917 intervened in the internal affairs of other countries
throughout the world 133 times before the Bolshevik
Revolution!
This contradiction of using the communist bogey to
ostensibly save other nations from being taken over by
Moscow or Beijing is exposed for the farce that it is in
Lumumba. Peck clearly shows that this was the case in the
Congo when Lumumba and his Congolese National Movement (MNC)
had their newly democratically elected independent nation,
which was founded after a free and fair electoral process,
usurped by a conspiracy between its former Belgian rulers
and their longtime financial partner, the U.S. The collusion
of how these two members of the western alliance actually
arranged the assassinations of Lumumba and members of his
cadre and imposed their own choice to protect their vested
economic interests: Col. Joseph Desire Mobutu, the moody,
envious, self-serving opportunist who was co-opted - and
contracted - by the U.S. to betray and compromise the
Congo's national independence in order to micro-manage the
country's vast wealth to foreign interests seated innocently
in splendid comfort in Brussels and on Wall Street. As a
result, according to reports, Mobutu would become second
only to the Shah of Iran as the richest world leader, while
the Congo had its precious natural resources sucked away as
it was reduced to an "economic basket case", leaving the
broad masses of Congolese people wretchedly impoverished,
their lives reduced to intolerable misery.
Eric Ebouney, a stage and film actor from the Cameroon with
a mastery of oratory skills, delivers a profound and
explosive performance portraying Lumumba which is so
exceptional that, if there is any fairness in Academy Awards
selections, then he should easily net a nomination and
ultimately an Oscar for Best Actor. And Alex Descas, from
Guadeloupe, who plays Mobutu, Lumumba's former aide-de-camp
who turns out to become his mentor's nemesis, gives such a
believable performance that audiences grimace and suck their
teeth expressing an actual hatred towards the presence of
his on-screen presence as Mobutu. Meanwhile, many are also
now researching this particular part of the Congo's history
to see if someone could really be as treacherous in
betraying their benefactor as depicted in the film.
Sadly, the real-life Mobutu Sese Seko was even worse because
the film primarily only covers roughly about a one year time
period - from pre-independence movement activities until
Lumumba's assassination. The film doesn't deal with the
subsequent 36-year repressive reign of Mobutu's exploitive
military dictatorship which was nearly as brutal as that of
King Leopold II, the ruthless Belgian monarch who was given
the Congo - a territory 80 times his own Belgium - as his
own "fiefdom", a personal reward for his part in organizing
the Berlin Conference of November 1884 through February
1885, which divided Africa among the western European
powers.
Lumumba is a tremendously moving film experience, with
beautiful cinematography and a stupendous soundtrack. The
casting with both its African and European actors and
actresses is outstanding, with everyone presenting
exceptional performances. And of course, Raoul Peck's
directing exhibits as much finesse as a maestro guiding an
orchestra - especially one with storytelling skills as a
Duke Ellington. It is no wonder that the film has already
won the Director Fortnight Award at Cannes last year and was
the winner for best feature film at the Pan-African Film
Festival in Los Angeles.
The movie was filmed in Belgium, where new information on
the Lumumba affair has been released in droves from its
archives, and Zimbabwe and Mozambique for its African
locations [the war being waged posed a security question
against shooting in the DRC], and has already astounded
audiences in other parts of Europe, Africa, Cuba and Canada.
At all screenings most people have left theatres awestruck
and shaken by the depths that so-called civilized and
democratic wealthy countries could sink in order to continue
their exploitation of an African territory whose people had
suffered so much misery ever since they first had contact
with Europe four hundred years earlier, during the beginning
of the dehumanizing European Trans-Atlantic Africa Slave
Trade and trafficking in kidnapped human beings in Africa,
and their later further subjugation to colonialisation.
Lumumba is an awesome film production. It is a phenomenal
retrospect on human suffering and the hypocrisy of so-called
western democracies whose avaricious greed have caused a
myriad of people of color throughout the world to laugh at
their demand that developing countries accept their behavior
as a paradigm for providing good governance, establishing
democratic norms, and as the only acceptable standard for
social advancement in the new millennium.
But as Lumumba pointed out in his last message to his wife,
Pauline Opanga, "History will one day have its say, but it
will not be the history that Brussels, Paris, Washington or
the United Nations will teach, but that will be taught in
countries emancipated from colonialism and its puppets.
Africa will write its own history, and it will be, to the
north and to the south of the Sahara, a history of glory and
dignity."
An essential part of that history was written 10 years ago
in Raoul Peck's prize winning documentary Lumumba - Death of
a Prophet. The substance of that bio-doc has now been
magnificently embellished in his poignant and breathtaking
major feature film masterpiece, the screenplay which he
wrote with Pascal Bonitzer. In cinematic terms, Peck's film
is a major contribution to the re-writing of Africa's
glorious history in dignity. And the puppeteers are not
likely to be happy with Peck's product. But other than that,
all people who are truly for common decency and fair play,
who believe in social justice, and redressing old grievances
by making right past wrongs, will see this film with a more
passionate vision. Those who believe in ridding the world of
debilitating racist notions dictated by the inordinate
military power of self-styled greedy superpowers, and are
willing to re-establish a mutually agreed upon truly
universal behavior for all humankind - embracing all the
respective peoples of this planet, they should love Raoul
Peck's Lumumba.
To all those who have been contacting me for several months
as to when and where they can see this film, Lumumba, at
long last, will formally begin its U.S. national release
with a premier performance on Wednesday, June 27th, 2001 at
the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, just west of 6th
Avenue in lower Manhattan in New York. A celebration will
follow the premier nearby at S.O.B.'s, at 204 Varick Street,
featuring an exclusive African cultural program with La
Troupe Makandal, New York's number 1 Haitian performing
group, a surprise celebrity guest host, special invited
guest of honor Lumumba filmmaker Raoul Peck, and more.
--
Further information on how to purchase tickets to the film
screening and opening night party can be obtained by calling
(212) 631-1189 or emailing info@imagenationfilmfestival.org.
Those interested can also visit the following website:
www.imagenationfilmfestival.org.
--
Elombe Brath is chairman of the Patrice Lumumba Coalition,
and an African internationalist elder and veteran of over 40
years of activism in the Pan-African nationalist movement.
Mr. Brath also worked as a graphic artist and consultant on
African Affairs for "Like It Is", the WABC-TV public affairs
program produced and hosted by Gil Noble, for 17 years, and
produces and hosts his own public affairs radio program,
Afrikaleidoscope, on WBAI 99.5 FM, heard weekly on Thursdays
between 9 pm and 10 pm.
Copyright (c) 2001 Elombe Brath. All Rights Reserved.
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