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HI-JACKED EASTER 1994, FLYING TO L.A, USC SHOAH FOUNDATION INSTITUTE EASTER 2008
Related to country: Rwanda

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Good Friday, I'm sitting in my room somewhere in Springfield, Missouri... far from my countryland. I deeply reflect on issues going on with my 80 min film "Behind this convent".
Back in Rwanda, someone I do not know was watching it as well. She immediately emailed me, "Gilbert, I thought your film looks very powerful and I thought of the irony that I was watching it on Good Friday." But she goes on, "I wondered one small thing where in the beginning the person is saying "after 13 years I want to know" and he says "Mbabarira", like, "I'm sorry but I want to know..." and to me, even the fact that he uses the words "mbabarira" to the genocidaires is something powerful, because his language is very polite. I wonder if that can be included in the subtitles..."

The thing that the viewer did not know is that I, the filmmaker, was the one confronting my parents' killer.

This picture below is the only vivid, physical and visual representation I have with my parents alive. It was their last picture taken by Easter 1994. I was told, "your parents are on this photo. You look like your mother." No one can understand the pain it caused me when for the first time, I saw it and struggle to guess who among these people were my parents. "I know them, I know them, no one knows them better than I do. I am their first born son." The same night, I had to seriously face my young brother Sauveur. He said, "How can that be? You do not know." I could not cry in front of him. How can a six years old boy understand a genocide? How can I teach him without creating pain and hatred in him?

Now that today, I know my parents on the photo yet I knew them. Now, I know that I, once upon a time, I have lived with my parents and I had a family and I did not come from the sky or born out of a tree. I am so happy about that but again, the smile is wiped away by the sad reality and haunting statistics of the dead: on this photo, how many who survived the genocide?

In 1994, the Easter was hi-jacked in Rwanda. Monday Easter, following an attack, I run to hide in some swamps in a place called "mu gishanga", the current industrial park. For two days, I was in their, in the waters, never afraid of the electric ports. My father's killer responding to a question by a public on his view as a Christian said "the priests did not give us good education and example to follow. We should not have killed..."

All members of my "African" family were christians. I was baptized and received all the sacraments. Those who came to kill us were christians too. They hunted us down with spears, arrows and grenades. On April 10th, 1994, they stormed a convent and took about 200 tutsi who sought refuge in there. Then, the hutu killers took them behind the convent in our home and proceeded to take their lives. My mother and these 200 people were hit with nail-clubs and hacked with machetes before they were thrown into a pit.

Then, the killers burnt down my home with fuel and inflamed the pit. If there was anyone who barely survived, they suffocated. My sister Rosine was 11 years old. Emmanuel, the killer, told me, "your sister throw herself into the pit, before we touched her." My father and three other men survived the same attack by hiding in the store room but they were discovered seven days later and taken from the convent. The killer Emmanuel goes on "we, first, beheaded your father. Then, we hit his body with nail-clubs." "Why?", I asked him. "We were Christians... we were not sure if he is not going to resurrect and we wanted to stop that."

Am I still a christian? A convent and a church is a House of God and respected for that. We, as humans, are the House of God. Aren't we all created by the same God? Our call as Christians should be to reclaim Easter by thinking deeply about its meaning of redemption in our today's world. Thinking about this Easter one more time again, is redemption enough? Is victory great? How about a defeat? Hands in the air, retreat and surrender. Do you think victory is great? At what costs should we celebrate the victory? Isn't the blood of Jesus enough? What of our confession? I am not the only one in quest of truth, perfection and redemption. Someone in the film said "for a request of forgiveness to be considered, the truth has to be told, not half told or withheld."

I am a rose grown on a bed of skeleton,
What raised me beneath is horrendous and gruesome,
But what is grown above me is vibrant.
A re-birth.

My contributions as a filmmaker have led me to the United States by May 2007 and celebrated by President Bill Clinton and President Kagame. I once again come back this January 2008 and this particular life's journey is meant to be a rebirth and make as many friends as possible to help me to ressurrect what died inside me. A new friend told me "you really should write poetry again... maybe a book of poems?" My friend, following the genocide, I lost everything. Everything. Even my ability to write a poem. A Rwandan proverb saying goes "ujya gukira indwara arayirata", that is to say "if one wants to be healed from a sickness, he or she must talk about it to the world."

Visiting the visual archive of the SHOAH FOUNDATION INSTITUTE on 24 and 25/03/2008, I am much more speechless to my own pain. How can I compare my inner feelings with the survivors and the witnesses of the Shoah?

Tears were falling,
Like a rain,
Like the flow of the waters of Nyabarongo river
To the burdened blue skies of California.
Tomorrow is not promised to you and or I.
So, I give thanks to what I have as a life and share what I can today.

We, as humans, cannot compare the pain. We are even struggling with words to describe what happened to us to speak beautiful to the world. We, here, refer to the ones who have been thrown into pits, raped, heavily marked with machetes. We have no name yet to name this suffering. We simply can learn from each other's grief, despair and inspire new hope.

In the words of the SHOAH FOUNDATION INSTITUTE, "one hundred years from now, historians who do research about our time will use video as their main resource. In the future, the past will be visual." In my own words, without testimonies of genocide, there is no history of it. I studied history but what I learnt from the Shoah Foundation is not something that people study in university classroom. You have to take this journey.

For your own information, I am not going to make a mistake about it but simply admit (hands in the air) that the writing of my screenplay "MOTHER RWANDA" is heavily marked by my visit to the USC SHOAH FOUNDATION, I changed the trailer and the film original intent is modified. This fiction film is going to explore the oral history and is interested in the events that took place in Gitarama (place), 1994 (april to be specific) and a particular mother.

But first of all, I have to go to find a film school, let the mind and heart mend. Then struggle to raise funds to write the screenplay and make the film. I got the possibility of touring the USC CINEMATIC STUDIES and be introduced the best professors in cinema.

My friends, I saw my dreams bold and valid: ten toes and ten fingers. Visiting the school and talking to the professors, I started seeing the endless possibilities of my childhood dream that was stolen and taken away for me. One has to study what he or she believes. There is no bandages to fix a broken soul, heart and yet bones mend and cut heals. Healing of the non-physical part of the humans is an inner process through which a person becomes whole once again.

Through filmmaking, I am searching my own ways to mend my broken spirits, something of the power of creativity. I refuse to go to hospitals. I refuse to take tablets. I want to try and see this medicine for my body.

I want creativity to be my own medicine. I want to take that risk. I have an impression that by the way I used my film instinct has helped to establish but I would love to go further to unlock my limited skills and in this way, the skills acquired only in a world renown university can end my torture of silent sufferings. This is not something that people can see and touch, because it is inside. Creativity is part of all of us, but creative expressions ought to be nurtured and encouraged.

Besides, my father's killer told me "your father was my friend." What? Before I digest this, the other killer in the film goes on to challenge me "A film is not really that important." I had only wanted to have a normal conversation as a civilized citizen. He told me this after I asked him "have you ever been filmed in your life?"
Now, I am much more concerned by this profession I just discovered. What is the value of making films? I would like to challenge filmmakers of this world to help me to respond to him. This is the journey I want to undertake. I have a serious question to respond. The floor is ours and the ball is in our court, we the filmmakers of the world.

A colleague in the profession I admire, Stephen Spielberg, might have once said " there is a rescue mission involved in the best movies. A person is saved from his own undoing or what other people are doing to him." [James Clarke, Stephen Spielberg, Herpenden, Pocket essential, 2004]