Mudimbe's Things and Words

Jean-Pierre Bekolo, director. Mudimbe's Things and Words. Original title: Les Choses et les Mots de Mudimbe. 2013. In French (with English subtitles). U.S/France/ Cameroon. Jean-Pierre Bekolo Sari. euro19.99.

The Cameroonian filmmaker Jean-Pierre Bekolo, known for his inventive award-winning films Quartier Mozart (1993) and Les Saignantes (2005), has made an intriguing documentary about the Congolese philosopher and writer Valentin-Yves Mudimbe. The film explores Mudimbe's ideas and life experiences through an extensive face-to-face interview, and includes the scholar's presentation of his impressive collection of objects and books. Born in 1941 in the Belgian Congo, V. Y. Mudimbe lived through the tumultuous 1950s in the region of Katanga and in Rwanda, where he studied at a Benedictine seminary. Bekolo's conversation with one of the most important African intellectuals of the twentieth century captures a sense of the man and his way of life, as well as his engagement with many pressing issues of our day. His thoughts range over the lessons we can learn from Frantz Fanon's misunderstanding of violence and Patrice Lumumba's tragic fate to the creation of racial identities in the Great Lakes region.

Viewers familiar with Isaac Julien's classic documentary Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Masks (1996) will notice a different treatment of Fanon and his ideas in their historical and political contexts in this film. Similarly, we find...