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Gilbert
Ndahayo's film career officially began in 2006 when he made the first Rwandan
short film ever, Scars Of My Days, an adventure docudrama story: "... In Rwanda, then, there were no street signs. You just cross as it fits...
"
Scars Of My Days was presented in 2007 at the prestigious New York Tribeca Film
Festival before an audience that included former US President Bill Clinton and
President Paul Kagame of Rwanda.
"My film career is
in part dedicated to explore horizons of storytelling as well as the power of
healing that only a storyteller can uncover and convey. My great
grandfather was an esoteric royal code holder of Rwanda's Nyiginya dynasty
that collapsed in 1959 due to political violence in the era of African independence," Ndahayo recalls.
At a very young age,
Ndahayo's family moved to the capital city of Rwanda. Even still, Ndahayo often
escaped the frantic pace of city life to visit his grandparents, and learn
the legends of his culture in spite of luxury and comfort. He says: “I was
so fascinated,
almost spoiled by all these stories. From my grandfather, I
learned stories and many
storytelling devices that I can use in my films.”
Ndahayo received illuminating introductory film training from Mira Nair's Maisha Film Lab in 2006 in Uganda. Additionally, he attended crash courses in editing from
Swedish Institute.
But
today, Gilbert Ndahayo, who lost both
his parents and fifty two members of his immediate family to the
genocide, finds himself forced and smack in the middle of Hollywood and the
politics of Hollywood.
“I
do not have the luxury of publicity divisions of studios. I
view my documentaries on the Rwandan genocide as a failure due to lack of
financial capacities.”
Since
1994, Hollywood and European media crews have made more than two hundred documentaries
and fictions about Rwanda’s genocide.
To him, a Rwandan film producer, the way he
sees the equation is simple: "They come, they film, and they go. In Hollywood markets, narrative schemes that portray Africa's cultural and historical references
have no place for promotion and distribution. Many of those films have not been shown even in places where they were filmed in Rwanda."
"I came to feel the
need to tell the story of their death from the inside since no other survivor
has ever made a film before me."
With an initial budget of
$50, Ndahayo is getting ready to release in early 2010 Beyond The Deadly Pit, the second documentary in the series that focuses on the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda to help the
survivors to put together the fragments
of their lives, and tell it to the world fifteen years after the genocide in Rwanda.
Click on this link to Listen to Gilbert being interviewed on the UN radio about the importance of his work in conjuction with the program Lesson from Rwanda: The United Nations and The Prevention of Genocide.
Ndahayo's upcoming production is a feature film tentatively titled Jojo Must Die. The story takes the storiesBeyond The Deadly Pit one step
further: : “How do Tutsi-Hutu live side by side and love
again?”
This is an evocative film that unfolds a story of a Hutu boy and a Tutsi girl who fall in
love, but like Romeo and Juliet, their families are entrapped by past
conflicts.
Jojo Must Die, scheduled to be filmed on location in Rwanda in early 2011, will try to respond artistically to the question that
has been asked to him by
so many about current Rwanda.
Click here to watch online Dirty Wine shot with Mira Nair's Maisha Film Lab facilities in Uganda.
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