Raoul Peck Research Articles

<sc>Lumumba</sc>. Produced by Jacques Bidou; directed by Raoul Peck; screenplay by Raoul Peck and Pascal Bonitzer. 2000; color; 115 minutes. France (French, Belgian, German, and Haitian coproduction); French with English subtitles. Distributed by Zeitgeist Films

<sc>Lumumba</sc>. Produced by Jacques Bidou; directed by Raoul Peck; screenplay by Raoul Peck and Pascal Bonitzer. 2000; color; 115 minutes. France (French, Belgian, German, and Haitian coproduction); French with English subtitles. Distributed by Zeitgeist Films

Raoul Peck's Lumumba : A Film for Our Times

The "biopic" Lumumba, which premiered in New York, Washington, and Los Angeles in July 2001 after opening in Paris and Montreal and which has been released in limited distribution internationally, is a film of great interest to Africanists. Directed by acclaimed Haitian documentary filmmaker Raoul Peck, Lumumba chronicles the rise, rule, arrest, and assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the charismatic leader and first prime minister of the postcolonial Congolese nation in 1960. Lumumba's career was meteoric and cruelly brief. Rising from rural obscurity to political activism in the Congolese National Movement party while working as a beer salesman in Leopoldville, he was imprisoned by the Belgian colonists for political activity but released to attend the 1960 international meeting on the Congo in Brussels prior to independence. Lumumba became the Congo's first prime minster in June 1960 at the age of thirty-four. He was forced out of office after two months, imprisoned, tortured, and killed by Belgian soldiers—in complicity, the film claims, with European and American government agents and other Congolese leaders, notably Joseph Mobutu—six months later. His leadership was, in the film's final words, "fifty years too soon."

<bold>Lumumba: Death of a Prophet</bold>. Produced and directed by Raoul Peck. 1992; color; 69 minutes. French, with English subtitles, and English. Distributor: California Newsreel, 149 Ninth Street, No. 420, San Francisco, Calif. 94103 (415) 621-6196 and <bold>Afrique, Je te plumerai</bold> [Africa, I Will Fleece You]. Produced and directed by Jean-Marie Teno. 1992; color; 88 minutes. French, with English subtitles. Distributor:

<bold>Lumumba: Death of a Prophet</bold>. Produced and directed by Raoul Peck. 1992; color; 69 minutes. French, with English subtitles, and English. Distributor: California Newsreel, 149 Ninth Street, No. 420, San Francisco, Calif. 94103 (415) 621-6196 and <bold>Afrique, Je te plumerai</bold> [Africa, I Will Fleece You]. Produced and directed by Jean-Marie Teno. 1992; color; 88 minutes. French, with English subtitles. Distributor: