Things of the Aimless Wanderer
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
No booking required
Things of the Aimless Wanderer
Kivu Ruhorahoza, UK/Rwanda, 2015, 78 minutes Birkbeck Cinema
Friday 16 February 6.00 pm Presenter: Kivu Ruhorahoza (Moon Road Films)
Organizer: Soody Gholami (Birkbeck) Discussant: Mpalive Msiska (Birkbeck)
'Kivu Ruhorahoza's arresting feature reveals a series of cryptic and loosely connected narrative shards. Each depicts an uneasy encounter between an African woman and a male figure of authority or menace, be he a nineteenth century white explorer, a twenty-first century Western journalist, or a Rwandan man performing reconnaissance for a shadowy internal agency. In each story, a female figure is an object of lust, surveillance, fascination or violence, inevitably disappearing from the narrative. Every disappearance becomes a sort of chorus, punctuated by enigmatic images and haunting musical soundscapes. Considering the film's title ('aimless wanderer' originally described hapless European explorers), one might indeed ask whether the female avatar of these stories may be a metaphor for Rwanda itself: colonized, objectified, and struggling to calibrate cultural gains, including gains for women, with reactionary policies and sentiments. Such questions haunt the periphery of this provocative film whose narrative core remains a reservoir of mystery.'
Sundance Festival website
'To be absolutely mesmerized by a film, I mean totally transfixed, is a rare happening in cinema, but should be the norm, right? Rwandan director Kivu Ruhorahoza's Things Of The Aimless Wanderer is just such a film. Spectacular and ambitious in all its working parts, it catapults cutting-edge African cinema onto the world stage with the intensity of a new religion.'
Ben Umstead, Screenanarchy
For information about the Guilt Group's work, see http://www.bbk.ac.uk/bisr/research/guilt-working-group.
BIMI is funded by four schools at Birkbeck: the School of Arts, the School of Law, the School of Social Sciences,
History and Philosophy, and the School of Science. The University of Pittsburgh is also a partner and co-funder.
Contact name:
Matthew Barrington
Contact phone:
020 7631 6115