Raoul Peck’s Lumumba, with Feza Kayungu Ramazani and Natacha Nsabimana

The African Film Institute is pleased to invite you to a screening of Lumumba (2000, 115 minutes) by Haitian director Raoul Peck, followed with a conversation between Feza Kayungu Ramazani of Centre D’art Waza and anthropologist Natacha Nsabimana, at e-flux Screening Room on Thursday, September 19 at 7pm. The event is part of the film series curated by Nsabimana for the  African Film Institute and e-flux Screening Room.

Taking a cue from the practice of an evening school as proposed by Christian Nyampeta’s Ecole du soir, Nsabimana invites filmmakers, artists, and scholars for a meditation and conversations around “African Cinema,” unfolding at e-flux Screening Room over the course of twelve months. What does the formulation evoke for us today? Is it worth holding onto? For whom? Comprised of a series of viewings sometimes followed by conversations, the curation will include feature films, shorts, and documentaries.

On June 30, 1960, the day of independence for the Democratic Republic of Congo, Patrice Lumumba told a crowd of dignitaries assembled for the occasion: “The Republic of the Congo has been proclaimed, and our country is now in the hands of its own children…We are proud of this struggle, of tears, of fire, and of blood, to the depths of our being, for it was a noble and just struggle, and indispensable to put an end to the humiliating slavery which was imposed upon us by force.” Six months later, he was murdered. 

Raoul Peck’s Lumumba traces the first and last days of Lumumba, an iconic African political figure, and with it the aspiration for a free Congo. It is the story of the beauty, the tears and blood that came with that dream.

For inquiries addressed to the African Film Institute, please write to africanfilminstitute@e-flux.com.

For general and press inquiries, contact program@e-flux.com.

Accessibility  
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.  
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.  
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the Screening Room and this bathroom.