Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T19:01:39.171Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Raoul Peck's Lumumba and Lumumba: La mort du prophète: On Cultural Amnesia and Historical Erasure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2013

Burlin Barr
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This article examines two films by Raoul Peck—Lumumba: La mort du prophèle (1992) and Lumumba (2000) that offer vastly divergent methods for remembering, memorializing, and meditating on the life and death of Patrice Lumumba. Peck succeeds in creating films that do more than preserve or resuscitate a historical record. The earlier film in particular performs analytic historical work as it delves into the conflicted historical record in which Lumumba is remembered. Peck uses an experimental and confrontational approach to reveal the ongoing forms of cultural censorship that have attempted to erase Lumumba and his legacy.

Résumé:

Résumé:

Cet essai examine deux films de Raoul Peck—Lumumba: La mort du prophète (1992) et Lumumba (2000) qui offrent deux méthodes completèment différentes pour rémemorer, commémorer, et méditer sur, la vie de Patrice Lumumba. Peck réussit à créer des films qui font plus que préserver ou ressusciter un document historique. Le film antéricur en particulier met en scène un travail d'analyse historique tout en se plongeant dans les archives conflictuelles exposant les souvenir de Lumumba. Peck utilise une approche expérimentale etde confrontation pour révéler les formes de censure culturelle ayant tenté d'effacer Lumumba et son héritage.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , April 2011 , pp. 85 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Bennett, Tony. 1995. The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bonitzer, Pascal. 1986. “The Silences of the Voice.” In Narrative Apparatus, Ideology, edited by Rosen, Philip, 319–34. New York: Columbia University PSress.Google Scholar
Conley, Tom. 1988. “Translator's Introduction.” In de Certeau, Michel, The Writing of History. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Crary, Jonathan. 1990. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
De Boeck, Filip. 1998. “Beyond the Grave: History, Memory, and Death in Postcolonial Congo/Zaïre.” In Memory and the Postcolony: African Anthropology and the Critique of Power, edited by Werbner, Richard, 21–57. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
De Certeau, Michel. 1988. The Writing of History. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
De Witte, Lugo. 2001. The Assassination of Lumumba. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Diawara, Manthia 2001. “African Cinema and Decolonization.” In The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994, edited by Enwezor, Okwui, 346–50. Munich: Prestel.Google Scholar
Diawara, Manthia. 1999. “The ‘I’ Narrator in Black Diaspora Documentary.” In Struggles for Representation: African American Documentary Film and Video, edited by Klotman, Phyllis R. and Cutler, Janet K., 315–28. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Gabara, Rachel. 2006. From Split to Screened Selves: French and Francophone Autobiography in the Third Person. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Gaines, Jane M. 1999. “Political Mimesis.” In Collecting Visible Evidence, edited by Gaines, Jane M. and Renov, Michael, 84–102. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Gaines, Jane M., and Renov, Michael, eds. 1999. Documenting Visible Evidence. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart. 1996. “Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation.” In Black British Cultural Studies, edited by Baker, Houston A. Jr., Diawara, Manthia, and Lindeborg, Ruth H., 210–22. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hochshild, Adam. 1998. King Uopold's Ghost: A Story of Creed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. New York: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Lopez, Ana M. 1990. “ The Battle of Chile: Documentary, Political Process, and Representation.” In The Social Documentary in Latin America, edited by Burton, Julianne, 267–87. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Moore, David. 2007. “Raoul Peck's Lumumba. History or Hagiography?” In Black and White in Colour: African History on Screen, edited by Bickford-Smith, Vivian and Mendelsohn, Richard, 223–39. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Nichols, Bill. 1985. “The Voice of Documentary.” In Movies and Methods, vol. 2, edited by Nichols, Bill, 258–73. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
O'Brien, Conor Cruise. 1962. To Katanga and Back: A UN Case History. New York: Grosset and Dunlap.Google Scholar
Pakenham, Thomas. 1991. The Scramble for Africa: Wliile Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876–1912. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Peck, Raoul 1992. Lumumba: La mort du prophèle. California Newsreel. France/Germany/Switzerland, 69 minutes.Google Scholar
Peck, Raoul. 2000. Lumumba. Zeitgeist Video. France/Belgium/Germany/Haiti, 115 minutes.Google Scholar
Rahier, Jean. 2003. “The Ghost of Leopold II: The Belgian Royal Museum of Central Africa and Its Dusty Colonialist Exhibition.” Research in African Literatures 34 (1): 58–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Renov, Michael, ed. 1993a. Theorizing Documentary (AFI Film Readers). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Renov, Michael, ed.. 1993. “Toward a Poetics of Documentary.” In Theorizing Documentary (AFI Film Readers), edited by Renov, Michael, 12–36. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rosen, Philip. 1993. “Documentand Documentary: On the Persistence of Historical Concepts.” In Theorizing Documentary: AFI Film Readers, edited by Renov, Michael, 58–89. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rosenstone, Robert A. 1998. Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Shillington, Kevin, ed. 2005a. Encyclopedia of African History. Vol 1. New York: Fitzroy Dearborn.Google Scholar
Shillington, Kevin, ed. 2005b. Encyclopedia of African History. Vol 2. New York: Fitzroy Dearborn.Google Scholar
Ukadike, N. Frank. 1995. “The Other Voices of Documentary: Allah Tantou and Afrique, je te plumerai .” Iris 18: 81–94.Google Scholar