The film, based on a true story, tells the story of the devastating event in recent world history, one that not enough people knew about--the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The movie details the long-simmering war between the ruling Hutu tribe and Tutsi rebels turned into civil war. The war where 1 million Rwandans, the majority of them women and children, were massacred within one single summer. Almost as incomprehensible as the killings, the film points out, was the lack of world intervention. This message made me think about the power of mass communication, but moreover, the power of a lack of mass communication, and what can happen when an event or circumstance is properly communicated to the world with the priority that it should have.
The focus of the movie is an ordinary man, a hardworking hotel employee named Paul Rusesabagina (Cheadle), an man with no political affiliations, who summoned the courage to shelter more than 1,000 people as the slaughter summereged their world. A Hutu married to a Tutsi, Rusesabagina took in people of both tribes. (Rusesabagina, who is now living in Belgium with his family, was a consultant for the film.)
Just for some background real quick--up until the mid 1900's Rwanda was a colony of Belgium (a colony that was awarded to them after the WWI from Germany as reparations). Belguim actually created the superficial division between the Hutu (people who have more Affrican faetures), and the Tutsis' (who have more "white" features, such as having lighter skin, thinner noses, etc.). The government before the civil war was Hutu, and after, Tutsi.
The film heartbreaking captures the lack of international involvement. It makes you truly think about the power the media has and how they decide to use it. In fact, very few people know that we actually had troops (UN & American) there the entire time, but since they had no orders, they just stood and watched as an entire group of people were massacred. How could this have been allowed to happen? What went wrong? Why didn't we intervene? Well, there are a lot of possible answers to these questions, and I would love to hear some of your thoughts on it?
2 comments:
No posts this week? Argh; I hate giving zeros...
Great movie wasn't it? If you like watching movies/documentaries on government and politics then you should check out the most recent documentary I watched, "The Road to Guantanamo". It’s a documentary about the terrorists held prisoners at Gauntanmo after 9/11 and they atrocities committed against them.
Post a Comment