Rwanda: Beyond the Deadly Pit, a moving documentary produced by a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, will be presented Monday, Nov. 16, at 7 p.m. in the Richard and Lucille Ice Auditorium in Melrose Hall at Linfield College.
Actor and Director Gilbert Ndahayo lost 52 members of his immediate family in the Rwandan genocide, a wave of ethnic cleansing that took the lives of more than a million within 100 days. The killers stormed a convent in a small hill town of the capital city and executed 200 Tutsis villagers, including Ndahayo’s parents, who were burned alive in a pit in his parents’ backyard.
Beyond the Deadly Pit is an autobiographical attempt to come to terms with the loss of loved ones, and a portrayal of the post–traumatic challenge of survivors, the tension between personal and collective memory, and the way Tutsi survivors are rebuilding their society.
“If one wants to be healed from the sickness, he must talk about it to the world,” Ndahayo said. “For 12 years I lived with the remains of 200 unpeaceful dead in my parents’ backyard. I wanted to tell a story about their death, a story that has not been shown on film.”
“The documentary is the heart-rending testimony of a young man seeking the truth about his parents’ death,” said French studies Professor Thierry Durand. “The film is about knowing and the impossibility of understanding, the meaning and difficulty of forgiveness and coping. The intensity of the filming also makes it an exemplary account of the suffering of an entire country and its uncertain future.”
Ndahayo’s technique of superimposition confers a haunting quality that renders in a unique way the feeling of so many survivors. The film immerses us in the gaze of a survivor and his never–ending attempt to deal with loss and trauma. It is an endeavor where filming and editing one’s past becomes an affirmation of one’s survival and voice within the present.
Filmed over the course of three years, the 2009 production is the first personal video documentation produced by a survivor of the genocide. Ndahayo is a recipient of the 2008 Verona Award for Best African Feature Film, a Signis Commendation for Best African Documentary and a First Time Director award for previous works, Behind This Convent (2008) and Scars of My Days (2006).
The event is sponsored by the President’s Office and the Department of Modern Languages. For a preview, visit www.rwandabeyondfilm.com. Linfield College is located at 900 SE Baker Street in McMinnville. For more information contact Durand at (503) 883-2474.