Not your ordinary premiere
Not many things justify spending $80 in one night when you’re on a graduate student travel budget; yet when you have the opportunity to attend a special screening of "Hotel Rwanda", in the presence of Don Cheadle and John Prendergast and the U.S. Ambassador to Uganda and a heap of other important people in the pearl of Africa, you get the sense this is going to be one hell of a different movie-going experience than watching the story of the 1994 Rwandan genocide in an air-conditioned movie theater in the Bay Area.
And it was.
Though I had already seen the movie when it originally came out in the U.S., this screening evoked chills and emotions I had not felt the first time around. The familiarity of the landscapes, in particular, struck a very shrill cord. This was right next door and the hills, the green, the houses, the dirt roads, the boda bodas… this looked like Kampala. It was eerie. I cried, I laughed, I was angry and disgusted and ashamed and deeply deeply sad.
The reception afterward was absolutely anticlimactic. There was beer. There was wine. There was Don. He was shorter than I thought. There was Celtel, the main event sponsor, overtly advertising itself. There was an auction hosted by an uncharismatic young woman who gave me a headache as she repeated incessantly, in her valleygirl voice, that the proceeds were for “the children of the north” and that we really needed to help “the children of the north” and that our money will go to “the children of the north” and thank you for saving the “children of the north”. There was the Ambassador, who spoke in such a soft voice that I could not understand a single thing he said and I’m sure Jeremy didn’t either even though he kept nodding and retorting with a “We have to keep pushing for that in Washington.” On more than a few occasions, I took a step back and looked around at the absurdity of it all and thought myself possibly in the middle of a Seinfeld episode.
Except there was really nothing funny about any of it. Just a lot of absurdity. Like waking up the next day and going to the health club and hearing about the explosion in a tourist-haven hotel in Sharm El-Sheik and the growing tensions in London and thinking I might very well be safer here in the slums of Kampala than back home in France or the United States. Or spending three months in Kampala and reading and hearing and talking with locals about that very war in the North as if it were taking place in a different country or on a different continent or in a different universe, really. Or attending a rally for the National Resistance Movement and hearing Museveni and his supporters go wild in support for the upcoming referendum that will “open up the political space to multipartyism” while he buys off the MPs – one by one – to amend the Constitution and abolish presidential term limits. Yes, that’s what it feels like. One big fat Seinfeld episode.
And it was.
Though I had already seen the movie when it originally came out in the U.S., this screening evoked chills and emotions I had not felt the first time around. The familiarity of the landscapes, in particular, struck a very shrill cord. This was right next door and the hills, the green, the houses, the dirt roads, the boda bodas… this looked like Kampala. It was eerie. I cried, I laughed, I was angry and disgusted and ashamed and deeply deeply sad.
The reception afterward was absolutely anticlimactic. There was beer. There was wine. There was Don. He was shorter than I thought. There was Celtel, the main event sponsor, overtly advertising itself. There was an auction hosted by an uncharismatic young woman who gave me a headache as she repeated incessantly, in her valleygirl voice, that the proceeds were for “the children of the north” and that we really needed to help “the children of the north” and that our money will go to “the children of the north” and thank you for saving the “children of the north”. There was the Ambassador, who spoke in such a soft voice that I could not understand a single thing he said and I’m sure Jeremy didn’t either even though he kept nodding and retorting with a “We have to keep pushing for that in Washington.” On more than a few occasions, I took a step back and looked around at the absurdity of it all and thought myself possibly in the middle of a Seinfeld episode.
Except there was really nothing funny about any of it. Just a lot of absurdity. Like waking up the next day and going to the health club and hearing about the explosion in a tourist-haven hotel in Sharm El-Sheik and the growing tensions in London and thinking I might very well be safer here in the slums of Kampala than back home in France or the United States. Or spending three months in Kampala and reading and hearing and talking with locals about that very war in the North as if it were taking place in a different country or on a different continent or in a different universe, really. Or attending a rally for the National Resistance Movement and hearing Museveni and his supporters go wild in support for the upcoming referendum that will “open up the political space to multipartyism” while he buys off the MPs – one by one – to amend the Constitution and abolish presidential term limits. Yes, that’s what it feels like. One big fat Seinfeld episode.
posted by cla at 2:23 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home