“Awa” Means Here

We found ourselves attending the Kinshasa International Film Festival last week. Banners were hanging over the boulevard near our apartment, so Annie and I inquired about it. We asked Hugh, and we found out his NGO has been one of the sponsors in the past and would be doing it again this year. The next thing we knew, we were asked to be jurors for the shows and help select the best film, best actor and actress, as well as a jurors’ choice. At first flattered, we became reluctant on discovering that none would be in English. Duh! 

It seems Hugh has no end of connections here in Kinshasa. We will be somewhere in public and are likely to be introduced to a government official or cultural figure. For example, he’s teaching English to the Russian ambassador, and he has me teaching the former prime minister of Congo. So we’re getting used to the unexpected. But this invitation to judge a film contest was a new one.

Fortunately, most of the films we watched had subtitles, making understanding and reviewing fairly easy. However, several were in French and needed to be translated for us as we watched; let’s just call it tedious—pause, explain, resume, pause, resume, huh? Etc. An hour-long film became, well, you get it.  Clearly, our qualifications to effectively and fairly select winners were flawed, biased, limited, questionable. Oh, yeah, like most contests where mere humans play God, selecting one or two winners to be honored with praise, fame, trophies, and prizes, while the rest, well, aren’t.

As for the winners of the festival. Our choices matched other judges (to our relief), giving the Best Actress award to a woman who portrayed a beleaguered single mother trying to provide an education for her daughter in a tragically corrupt social situation. It was called Awa which means here (and Here happens to be an amazing visual feast of Kinshasa. So we want to show it to you when we get home.

Best Actor went to a black forty-something lover of a white girl (drop-dead-gorgeous); he tried to resist a phony racist-motivated arrest by French police as the couple were simply walking arm-in-arm down a sidewalk. The young man resisted, the policeman drew his gun, and in the scuffle the beautiful girl is killed. Devastated he takes his own life.

Best Film went to Mama Bobo, a very touching story of an old widow eager to join her husband beyond.

The film festival was our first glimpse of the upper crust of society here—splashy people, good music, a colorful crowd. I should mention that African fashion features flashy, glitzy suits on the men, who in many ways out-spangle the women. For women here, the dress plays only a supporting role to the wig, which is the real star of her show. (Even school teachers we work with wear wigs.) The finest of these stylish enhancements are often referred to as Egyptian weaves. To me, they resemble dreadlocks but more tightly woven, braided, intertwined. Rows of perfectly-laced black locks may be straight lines or curved and may be snug to the skull or layered and multi-colored with hemp-like strands that give rich textures, like elegant yarn often punctuated with beads or jewels. Then, from either the top or back of the head, small braids loosen and hang freely down the back or onto shoulders and trail even more loosely, sometimes different colors, brown, auburn, even blonde. Whether piled high (and heavy in this tropical heat) or extended back, they wear these like crowns as proudly as a monarch.