VERDICT: Petna Ndaliko Katondolo’s documentary is a multifaceted exploration of complex questions around the combating of European perspectives in cinema about Africa.
There is an Alkebulan proverb that the world is made up of stories and people enact the stories that they believe. The story of Kumbuka, Petna Ndaliko Katondolo’s new documentary, begins with another documentary: Joris Postema’s 2019 film Stop Filming Us. As a result of the reaction to a white, Dutch filmmaker’s attempt to depict the Democratic Republic of Congo, Postema decided to subsequently hand his raw footage to two of his subjects and challenged them to make a film shorn of his influence. Their process of endeavouring to enact their own story is captured by Ndaliko Katondolo’s camera.
In this instance, the question of addressing a colonial viewpoint is made even more difficult than usual by the fact that they are restricted to the pre-existing footage, which has an inherent perspective, shot as it was by European filmmakers. Kumbuka is not constrained by such limitations and so freely flits between verité observation of theoretical discussions interrogating Postema’s recordings and other modes including utilising archival material, interviews about filmmaking and curating in the DRC, and some fictionalised Afrofuturist inserts.
Eventually, Kumbuka comes to centre on the concept of “Ejo-Lobi,” familiar from Ndaliko Katondolo’s previous films. An interviewee describes it as ‘a way of thinking that projects us into an indigenous philosophy’ by exploring a temporal plane in which the future’s past and the past’s future are entwined. It allows for the re-connection with, and potential re-adoption of, pre-colonial wisdom. The film itself follows similar tenets, recycling imagery from earlier in the piece to suggest both circular pathways and, with the benefit of knowledge unburdened by European thought, a new direction forward.
Director, editor: Petna Ndaliko Katondolo
Producer: Cherie Rivers Ndaliko
Cinematography: Kapelite Mutembwi, Petna Ndaliko Katondolo
Sound design: Lee Weisert
Production company: Alkebu Film Productions (Democratic Republic of Congo)
Venue: Rotterdam International Film Festival
In Kiswahili, French, Lingala
59 minutes
