Death, Image, Memory : The Genocide in Rwanda and its Aftermath in Photography and Documentary Film

232 Pages·2017·3.47 MB·English

by  Piotr Cieplak

Death, Image, Memory
PiotrCieplak
Death, Image,
Memory
The Genocide in Rwanda and its Aftermath
in Photography and Documentary Film
PiotrCieplak
BrunelUniversityLondon
Uxbridge,UK
ISBN978-1-137-57987-4 ISBN978-1-137-57988-1(eBook)
DOI10.1057/978-1-137-57988-1
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2017940239
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ForEmma Wilson andBeata Cieplak
In memoryof StefanKalota
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank Chris Brown and Emma Wilson for their unwavering
support throughout this project. Laura Seymour’s comments and help
with thepreparation ofthe manuscript arealso greatlyappreciated.
Moreover, I’d like to thank Pam Hirsch, Catherine Grant, Ian James,
Libby Saxton, Sam Haddow, Zoe Norridge, Lindiwe Dovey, Phil Clark,
Andrew Wallis, Devon Curtis, Ed Saunders, Chris O’Rourke, Matilda
Mroz, Beata Cieplak, Lidia Kalota, Geoff King, Julian Petley, Martyna
Michalik, Hannah Gibson, Alex Crampton, Amy Digout, Monika
Sznajder, Matilda Battersby, Kivu Ruhorahoza, Luc Sung Yu Lun, Jenny
Doubt andHelenOyeyemi.
Many thanks to Nick Hughes, Patrick Mureithi and Debs Gardner-
Patersonforagreeing tobe interviewedforthisproject.
In Rwanda, I’d like to thank Eric Kabera, Ayubu Kasasa Mago, Pierre
Kayitana, Eugene Safali, Yves Kamuronsi, Claver Irakoze, Jean-Marie
Kayishema, Kabwete Charles Mulinda and Naphtal Ahishakiye for their
time and expertise. I’d also like to thank the staff at the Rwanda Cinema
Centre, the Rwanda Film Festival, IBUKA, the Gisozi Memorial Centre
(now Kigali Genocide Memorial), the Genocide Archive, the National
University of Rwanda (and its library) and the UN International
CriminalTribunalforRwandain Arusha,Tanzania.
SomeoftheresearchforthisprojectwasconductedaspartofmyPhD
degree,generouslyfundedbytheArtsandHumanitiesResearchCouncil.
The research trips that contributed to this book were also supported by
the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cambridge, and by
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BrunelUniversityLondon.TheeditorialteamatPalgraveandthepropo-
sal andmanuscript reviewers havealso been tremendouslyhelpful.
Lastly, thankyou toMatthew Flacks forallhissupport andpatience.
C
ONTENTS
Introduction 1
Chapter1: Image,Evidence, Memory 25
Chapter2: Images ofAfter:Gilles Peress
andSebastião Salgado 55
Chapter3: Images ofBefore: Personal
Archives andthe Kigali Genocide Memorial 91
Chapter4: ‘Who FilmedThis?’—Iseta:
Behind theRoadblock (2008) 125
Chapter5: ‘IRemember Them’—Keepers
of Memory(2004) 159
Conclusion: InDefence of Images? 195
Bibliography 201
Index 219
ix
Introduction
THE IRRELEVANCE OF IMAGES
Inhisaccountofconversationswithsurvivors,TheStrategyofAntelopes:
Living in Rwanda After the Genocide (2009), Jean Hatzfeld describes
thearrivalofafilmcrewinNyamwiza.Withtheshootsetup,thefilming
begins while Hatzfeld and the locals look on. Here’s what they see:
‘a camera mounted on tracks; fake corpses lying in the muck; a loud-
speakerblaringdirections;anaked,mud-splatteredboywhopopsinand
outofthepapyrusfortakeaftertake’(96–97).It’sjustanotherdayona
filmset, only fleetingly disturbed bythecries of some of the technicians
‘who can’t bear visualizing sequences that are too violent’ (97). Once
completed,thefilm,RaoulPeck’sSometimes inApril(2005),willtravel
totelevision,cinemaandcomputerscreensfar,farawayfromthepapyrus
marsh and, joining other movies on the topic, become one of the main
points of contact with the Rwandan genocide for audiences around the
world.1IntinyNyamwiza,‘thehundredsofonlookerscrouchingonthe
grass remain eerily silent, stunned by an enterprise that is to them
unthinkable:tomakeamuddykidrehearseandplaythissceneofkilling’
(Hatzfeld, 2009: 97).
In The Strategy of Antelopes, the account of the film shoot opens up a
conversation between Hatzfeld and Innocent Rwililiza and Berthe
Mwanankabandi—both survivors—about what it would mean to convey
the experience of the genocide through images. Hatzfeld mentions the
lack of photographs of genocidal killings and the abundance of those
©TheAuthor(s)2017 1
P.Cieplak,Death,Image,Memory,
DOI10.1057/978-1-137-57988-1_1
2 INTRODUCTION
showing the aftermath of the slaughters. Rwililiza responds that he can
‘accept’thepublicdisplayofthelatter‘becausetheyarepicturesfromafter
thegenocide’(98).Astothedearthofphotographsofkillings,itis‘most
fortunate’.Rwililizasays:‘imagesofkillingsunderway—Icouldnotbear
that’. He goes on to observe that the availability of these photographs
would ‘pile pain on the suffering of the survivors and be useless besides.
Because those pictures would make nothing more explicit to people who
did not experience the genocide, and would simply illustrate a dance of
death’ (99).
Mwanankabandi, while also sceptical about the usefulness of such
images, focuses on how impossible it would be for them to convey
what death and physical survival felt like. She asks: ‘Who can take a
picture of a mama clutching her infant beneath her pagne as she listens
to a small band of interahamwe wade past her in the water.’2 And
then:
Somefugitivesseemedsopanickedanddisheartenedthatyoucouldseeitin
theireyes.Whocantakeapictureofthoselooks,andtheoneswegavetothe
scatteredclumpsofbodieswhenwecameoutofthemireatsundown?(99)
The unbearable thought of the images existing and being viewed,
coupled with the doubt about the camera and photographer’s ability to
capture anything that could even remotely approach the experience, is
summed up eloquently by Rwililiza. He says that ‘the intimate truth of
the genocide belongs to those who lived it, and so does the right to
withhold this truth’ (100).
It is with this warning in mind that I begin this book—very aware
that it cannot even approach ‘the intimate truth of the genocide’ as
lived through by the survivors and the killers, as experienced by those
who didn’t survive. This is partly because of the book’s focus but
mostly due to the fact that no amount of reading and analysis can
ever stand its ground when confronted with what actually happened
and with how the survivors speak about it.3 The testimonies published
in Hatzfeld’s earlier volume, Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda
Speak (2006), offer a glimpse of what it might mean to remember
the genocide. Cassius Niyinonsaba—12 years old at the time of the
interview—recounts the massacre in the parish church in Nyamata. He
talks about the Interahamwe militia cutting everyone sheltered in the
church ‘without choosing’; about how ‘people not streaming with