Cemetery State
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by Filip De Boeck
Documentary | Belgium - Netherlands | 2009 | DigiBeta | 70 min.
italian subtitles by EMM
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- date
- sunday 18 july
- location
- BAONE, Villa Beatrice d'Este
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The cemetery of Kintambo is one of the oldest and largest cemeteries of Kinshasa, the capital of the DRCongo. Over the years, the city has increasingly invaded the cemetery, and shanty towns have sprung up alongside it. One of these is the populated slum area of Camp Luka, also known as ‘the State’. Here, the living and dead live in close proximity. Although the cemetery was officially closed by the urban authorities, the people from Camp Luka continue to bury their dead there. This film follows one group of grave-diggers in the cemetery of Kintambo, where mourning rituals and funerals have become moments of upheaval and contestation of social and political orders.
As the coordinator of the Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa (IARA, formerly the Africa Research Centre), a Research Unit of the Faculty of Social Sciences, professor Filip De Boeck (° Antwerp, 1961) is actively involved in teaching, promoting, coordinating and supervising research in and on Africa. Since 1987 he has conducted extensive field research in both rural and urban communities in D.R. Congo (ex-Zaire). His current theoretical interests include local subjectivities of crisis, postcolonial memory, youth and the politics of culture, and the transformation of private and public space in the urban context in Africa. Filip De Boeck has published extensively on his research and on a wide variety of topics including postcolonial identity in Africa, processes of accumulation and expenditure in informal economies, history, memory, death, and popular urban culture, especially with regard to children and youth.
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- Direction
- Filip De Boeck
- Story
- Filip De Boeck
- Photography
- Renaat Lambeets
- Editing
- Els Voorspoels
- Production
- FilmNatie, Viewpoint Productions
- Web site
- www.viewpointdocs.com
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