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| Kivu Ruhorahoza |
One of the tricky aspects of looking at art films from developing countries is that they tend not to be terribly popular at home. For instance, do Iranian crowds flock to see the films of Abbas Kiarostami? Goodness, no. In fact, according to a piece in The Believer, most Iranians would much prefer American blockbusters, like Shrek. In fact, Shrek has such a goddam following in Iran that people will go to see different dubbings of it and then compare them to see which dub did it best.
The question often faced by the makers of art films in places like Iran or India is: are you making these films for domestic consumption, or are you making them for the international festival circuit? The great Indian auteur Satyajit Ray faced domestic criticism for his unflinching depictions of Indian poverty in films like Pather Panchali. It was alleged that this was the sort of depiction of India that Westerners wanted to see; the Indian elites had similar issues with the Western filmmakers that they imported; for instance, when Nehru invited Roberto Rossellini to the country to make a film about post-independence India, he wanted the Italian to depict scenes of modernization and industrialization. Rossellini, by contrast, was much more interested in filming mahouts with their elephants and scenes of pre-industrial rural life.
Now, we could get into a big ol� clusterfuck about Orientalism and exoticism and what the �Western gaze� of someone like Rossellini was looking for in India, but we should also bear in mind that what Nehru wanted him to make was essentially a propaganda film. So if we consider these cases to be representative, it seems that the filmmaker in developing countries is torn between producing crowd-pleasers like Shrekor rose-tinted propaganda films of the sort that Ray refused to make and Rossellini failed to make.
The Rwandan filmmaker Kivu Ruhorahoza confronts this issue head-on in his 2011 movie Grey Matter, a meta-film whose frame-story depicts the troubled circumstances of its own production. The film opens with a filmmaker name of Balthazar, clearly Ruhorahoza�s stand-in, as he struggles to secure funding for his upcoming film about the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. Balthazar doesn�t want to pull any punches: he wants all the brutality and squalor and sex that are guaranteed to turn off a conservative audience (or just an audience seeking a lighthearted film). In a conversation with his lead actress, Balthazar explains that he wants a graphic rape scene, �like in Blue Velvet, when Dennis Hopper rapes Isabella Rossellini [the Rossellini clan is apparently going to be ubiquitous in this post] and Kyle MacLachlan watches from in the closet.� The actress points out that (a) nobody wants to see that and (b) it will create a huge hassle with the censors and he�ll be sabotaging his film from the get-go. No, no, it�s not like that, he insists. Has she seen Irreversible? Yes, she sighs, she�s seen Irreversible. (Your bloggist has not seen Irreversible. He also hasn�t seen Takashi Miikie�s Audition. He�s theoretically been desensitized to most movie violence, but he can�t bring himself to see these films).
Anyway, I�m getting off-track here; what�s important is that Balthazar goes to a meeting with a representative for the government�s cultural wing (unlike the United States, many other countries like to subsidize the arts). And the government representative says to him, Well, it�s a great script, we think you�re a very talented writer, don�t get me wrong, but� Well, is this story [the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide] really� relevant? Is it really that important? What we�d prefer�and we�d be willing to give you funding for this�what we�d prefer is a movie about AIDS prevention, or about combating violence against women. You know, a movie with a good, strong message that reflects the government position.
So Balthazar doesn�t get his money from the government (and maybe that�s for the best; the current Rwandan government is appalling) and decides to fund the movie himself. And then the frame story ends and we get to see the movie that Balthazar makes, which is divided into two parts: (a) a g�nocidaire in a mental institution carries on a psychotic dialogue with a cockroach and (b) a brother and sister whose parents were killed during the genocide try to deal with the brother�s severe anxiety and hallucinations. In order to pay for her brother�s anxiety meds, the sister provides her brother�s doctor with sexual services and we see her disgustedly spitting out his semen just as Balthazar had proposed during the frame-story (Gaspar No� would surely be proud).
Now, I don�t know what the Rwandan reaction to Grey Matter was like. Maybe they loved it; maybe they�re not philistines like their American (and apparently Iranian and Indian) counterparts (I am referring here to �the masses,� I�m sure there are individuals in these countries who like art films and hate Hollywood). But I can�t imagine the government was very pleased with it (or maybe they just didn�t see it. American presidents don�t watch the documentaries made against them, anymore than they read the poetry denouncing them). But Grey Matter did the international festival circuit and won prizes at Tribeca and the Warsaw Film Festival. Perhaps, in the end, philistinism is an international problem, and Kivu Ruhorahoza will join the ranks of auteurs like Abbas Kiarostami and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, whose films don�t attract much attention or make much money in their countries of origin. But neither do films by Europeans like Pedro Costa and Aleksandr Sokurov, or even big, established names like Jean-Luc Godard (this is based on the assumption that Film Socialism didn�t make a lot of money). But fuck movies that make money. Michael Bay�s films make a lot of money. Godard�s and Apichatpong�s don�t and Ruhorahoza�s probably won�t either. But they�re much more vital than all the bullshit in Hollywood (or Bollywood or Nollywood) and as long as there are festivals and endowments to support them, cinema in general will remain a vital art form.
