KEY POINTS:
Eric Kabera was sitting beside the pool at Kigali's Mille Collines hotel when he decided to make Rwanda's first feature film. It was 1997, the influx of foreign journalists had slowed and his work as a local fixer had dropped off with it.
Kabera, a Rwandan Tutsi who
had spent most of his life in exile in Goma, eastern Zaire, was concerned by the lack of global attention paid to his country's genocide, not the lack of work. A film about the genocide would, he thought, remind people across the world of what happened in three terrible months in 1994.
With British film-maker Nick Hughes, Kabera made 100 Days, the first film about the genocide. It would not be the last. After struggling for four years to get it released, 100 Days spawned a number of successors, the most notable of which, Hotel Rwanda, was based on what had taken place at the Mille Collines. Starring Don Cheadle and British actress Sophie Okonedo, the film was nominated for three Oscars.
The events in Rwanda are now burned into the collective consciousness as the last genocide of the 20th century. In just 100 days, 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were slaughtered by extremist Hutus while the rest of the world sat and watched.
A further reminder will hit cinemas next month with the release of Shake Hands With The Devil, a film based on the memoirs of General Romeo Dallaire, the commander of the undermanned and undermined UN force in Rwanda during the slaughter.
Now Kabera wants to make a comedy. But he finds himself a victim of the potent profile he helped to create for the country.
"It has nothing to do with genocide," he said of his new project. "It's a comedy about a beautiful girl. But I talk to investors and they say: 'A comedy in Rwanda? I don't see that'.
"That's the problem we have now. These films are sending a message about Rwanda, so at least people know where we're from, but it means that everybody who sees it sees the genocide and nothing else. It is a good introduction but we want to go beyond the genocide. We want to present a new face of Rwanda."
To do this means creating a film industry. The flow of film crews in and out of Rwanda over the past few years has created a buzz among local film-makers but it has been hard to capitalise on it.
"People come, they shoot, they go," says Kabera. "There was no film culture to speak of. I wanted to grow that culture."
He started setting up the Rwanda Film Centre as a place to train young, film-makers. Two were trained in the first year, a handful the next. By 2005 Kabera felt he had enough films to put together Rwanda's first film festival. More than 100 were shown in all, most from overseas.
Not content with showing films in the capital, Kigali, Kabera decided a selection of those made by Rwandans needed to be taken out to the rural areas.
"One of the catalysts for the genocide was that people had no idea what life was like outside their own village," he says. "We were too insular."
Rwanda is marketed to the world as, "the land of a thousand hills". The travelling film festival was, somewhat inevitably, named "Hillywood".
In a country with just one television station and few cultural events outside Kigali, Hillywood has taken off in a way even Kabera did not expect.
Half a dozen short films are played on an inflatable screen in seven different locations on seven successive days. Up to 10,000 people come to each show. "At 10 o'clock we finish and all these people are saying 'More! More! Give us more films!' But we don't have any more," said Kabera.
Topping the bill this year was Hey, Mr DJ!, about an arrogant young disc jockey who discovers he is HIV positive. Others looked at issues ranging from poverty and education to love and friendship, and were made in Rwanda's most widely spoken language, Kinya-rwanda.
Hillywood has also had its first brush with Hollywood. The Tribeca Film Festival in New York, set up by Robert De Niro, celebrated Rwandan cinema in May. Three short films were shown: Scars Of My Days by Gilbert Ndahayo, A Love Letter To My Country by Thierry Dushimirimana and Behind These Walls by Pierre Lalumiere Kayitana - all of which portray Rwanda as it is now, rather than during the genocide.
The event coincided with a visit to the US by Rwanda's President, Paul Kagame. He was accompanied to the film festival by Bill Clinton who said the films were an example of a "modern rich culture rooted in who they are without denying where they have been; looking toward where they can go and what they can become".
Kabera and his team at the Rwanda Film Centre are now trying to put together a schedule for next year's Hillywood and the Kigali film festival. Foreign films, many of them African, will be on the bill alongside some made by Rwandans. Bamako, a Malian film that has won rave reviews in the US and the UK, is pencilled in for the opening night at Kigali's five-star Serena hotel. Despite the progress that has been made in the last 10 years, Rwanda still does not have a purpose-built cinema.
Kabera is trying to rectify that. More than 30 workmen are constructing a cinema in Kigali's new 2020 estate, on a hill high above the city centre. A grand looking new building, situated in a square just around the corner, was Kabera's first choice but the owners of the new estate decided to turn it into a church instead.
Standing in the middle of the building site, Kabera shows where the main auditorium seating 300 people will be. "And up there," he says, pointing to an as yet unbuilt first floor, "there will be a pastry and coffee shop, while over there we'll have a training centre."
The only problem is money. Kabera estimates it will cost around US$600,000 ($852,000) to build the whole cinema and he only has US$100,000 so far. When the money runs out building work will come to a stop.
"I wanted to get started though," he says. "I hope it will be easier to get more money once we've started.
"For people to go beyond the genocide is very difficult. But I think people will realise Rwandans can do comedy.
"We can't forget our past, it's in our everyday lives, but we have to choose. Do we get stuck with it or do we get on and face a better future?"
- Independent
