@ Mobutu: King af Zaire
Mobutn: ro; du Zaire
Belgium/France, 1999,
135 minutes, director:
Thierry Michel.

Michael Becker
News Editer

THE director subtitled
this one an “African
tragedy.” It’s an apt
description.

Michel's investigation is an
exhaustive one and makes
great use of the manv telling
interviews conducted with
Mobutu over the lengthy
course of his bloody career.

In grainy biack and white,
the audience meets Mobutu as
a young journalist working in
Belgium.

Belgian television journal-
ists in turn had Iiseral access to
the man. Mobutu’s boundless
ego, combined with his past as
a newspaper writer for the
1950s’ press in Zaire, turned
each encounter into a cat and
mouse game.

We see how unbridled
power works in the hands of a
cunning Machiavellian player.
Mobur controlled his own
people, first throu; ¢ guise
of a stern father figure and
more thoroughly through fear
and repression. He eliminated
his opposition through mur-
der. He used gris-gris magic.
One former aide interviewed
for the project said Moburu
would drink human blood.

Mobutu Sese Seko con-
trolled his underlings by sleep-
ing with their wives. At the
time of his death Mobutu
himself had rwo wives — twin
sisters,

Music from
‘the heart -
‘and throat

“Bl Genghis Blues, USA,
1998, 89 minutes Director:
Roko Belic.

Ob, Oh big of jet airliner

Don’t carry me too far away

- Oh, Oh big ol? jet airliner
Cause it’s bere that Dve got to
stay

— Jet Airliner by Paul Pena

WHAT do you get
when a blind blues play-
er twiddling the dials of

_ his shortwave radio at

- home in San Francisco

hears a Tuvan throat-

_ Singer on Radio
Moscow for the first
time?

You have. the seed for an
incredible journey and the
subject of an emotionally
supercharged documentary.

Blues player and song-
writer Pau} Pena has worked

_with the likes of T-Bone
Walker, B.B. King, John Lee
Hooker and Bonnie Raitt.

Chronically depressed

: since his wife died and mar-
ginalized in his home coun-

“try, Pena became fascinated

_ with what he heard.

| He painstakingly taught

* himself'a rudimentary facility
with the Tuvan language via

: See Film page 2B

MOBUTU Sese Seko in all his splendid giery.

He controlled international
political allies by funding their
election campaigns and work-
ing the anti-communist angle.

From the beginning in
1965, when the CIA-backed
military leader snatched power
from his political masters in
the former Belgian Congo, to
the end when he died a few
vears ago as one of the richest
men in the world, Mobutu’s
legacy is that of an efficient
plunderer.

The rapacious dictator
proved no better that Kin:
Leopold IH of Belgium, who
claimed much of the Congo

‘region in the 1870s, amassed a

fortune from his vast rubber
lantations and ordered the
ands and feet chopped off of
slaves who did not mect their
quotas.

And yet he is not without
sympathy. Tliere is real pathos
to be found in some of the
footage: Mobutu nervously
tapping a cane while a Belgian
television journalist has him
consider his future as open

revolt gains momentum in
Zaire; Mobutu striving to
emulate the white-gloved wave
of a visiting dignitary.

A few scenes from the film
remain locked in my brain a
week after viewing: At end-
game, the embattled dictator,
openly reviled by the majority
of his countrymen, emerging

Ae —

BLUES singer Paul Pena with Tuvan friends.

LAND is paid for with blood in Outskirts.

from his glistening jungle
palace to drive his gold-
trimmed candy apple red Jeep
Grand Cherokee into the sur-
rounding village to hand out
wads of cash to beggars;
Mobutu Sese Seko sitting next
to the Queen of England in an
open carriage waving with
regal care to the British mass-

es; Mobutu being intraduced
by U.S. President George
Bush as a great friend of
America; a helicopter pilot
describing his job of dropping
the bodies of dissidents into a
river under the cover of night.

The economy of the third-
largest country in Africa col-
lapsed under rot of the 32-year
dictatorship of Mobuni. By
the time his run of pillaging
ended in 1997, the annual per
capita income was less than
$200 — this in a country that
was once one of the world’s
top diamond, copper and
cobalt producers.

It’s a deadly fascinating
process to witness by way of
intelligent hindsight and
overview, created by a skilled
documentary film-maker.
Because it’s an artfully told
true story, it’s all the more
compelling.

This film offers a substan-
tive lesson of the kind of anar-
chy that can go down in the
name of law, order and patrio-
tism of convenience.

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Outskirts:
macabre
road movie

@ Outskirts Okraina,
Russia, 1998, 95 minutes
Director: Peter Lutsik
THIS Canadian pre-
miere showing came in
glorious black and
white.

Lursik plays with the
heroic social realist style of
Soviet films shot in the 1920s
and 1930s, but sets the storv
in modern Russia. It’s a sim-
ple story and it plays out
with plenty of dark humour
and allegorical imagery.

The heroes of the piece
are a bedraggled crew of
farmers who live on the out-
skirts of Moscow. Finding
they no longer control the
land their families have
worked for ever, the group
sets off on a quest to find out
who took the land from

sem and sold it to an oil
company.

In essence Outskirts is a
macabre road movie. As the
farmers move up the chain of
command of responsibility,
they torture their way to the
truth. Paying for land with
blood is a dominant theme of
this piece.

Apparently this film was
denounced in some quarters
and almost banned in Russia
due to its direct criticism of
the contemporary state of -
affairs in that country. Be it
czarist, communist or capital-
ist regimes in power, all share

- a basic quality: the poor are

there to be exploited.
Outskirts has a few of
them wake up long cnough

to win a round. .
— Michael Becker

WHTESPOTIDGD

WALL FT OGRE OS

WHEREVER YOU G2

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