Burundi Film Center
A production blog about the Burundi Film Center and the wonderful and surprising experiences of producing a new series of short films!
Written by
Clara
November 8, 2010
Clara, here. I’m the person who is lucky enough to be the Burundi Film Center’s artist in residence for this year. No, there were no other applicants but it’s a combination of fortunes that put me in Burundi for a year and connected with the BFC. Last week, along with a passel of participants, we kicked off BFC’s first documentary workshop. Like the fiction workshops, it will be a month long and we’re aiming to produce several shorts. With documentaries of course, that poses a problem. We can’t have participants act our films out for our cameras, things have to happen in front of them! That’s why we spent a lot of time in the first week talking about how to write a documentary and discussing how documentaries use narrative structure. That and having some fun with name games.
The workshop participants are impressively dedicated to learning. The debates we’ve had in the workshop include the line between fiction and non-fiction or the ethics of documentary production and everyone takes them extremely seriously!
This week, we’re moving in to more technical subjects and developing our story ideas into treatments. Oh, the documentaries we’ll make. We’ll be seeing - and filming - some great sights. And, of course, sharing that story here.
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August 31, 2010
The Wheels Are in Motion
Papy sat me down last week to explain how the BFC is like a tree that produces fruit but has no roots. To prevent things from dying when I leave, we need to have a team and a home that will let people know that – even if the project is annual – the BFC has a permanent place and purpose. I’ve been getting the same advice (read: desperate pleas) from everyone else here as well. So I’m listening, and we’ve decided to rent and decorate a section of Papy’s office to be our temporary headquarters, put up a big sign outside, make business cards for Papy and Apollinaire and even put BFC decals on Papy’s van. After our incredible gala on Saturday, this was the next best feeling I could ask for.
All these commitments were possible because I just signed a sponsorship contract with a large telephone company for our CinémaMobile. So before the rain season arrives in late September, we’ll be touring the new films all over the country to five provinces and 13 different communes, and hopefully keeping some seed money to get things ready for next year. And by “we”, I actually mean the rest of the BFC team. I’ll be leaving Burundi before the tour even starts. It’s a shame because the open-air screenings were the most enjoyable part of the project in 2007. Having things still happen when I’m gone, however, does bring a different kind of gratification. We even held one unsponsored outdoor screening just for the team to practice, and me to enjoy.
Next stop for the films – the rest of the world. Papy and I will be at the Off-Courts Film Festival in France for a week premiering one of the films, and then the entire 2010 series will play outside Burundi for the first time at a benefit screening in Ottawa in early November. From there, I’ll be once again distributing the films to festivals worldwide and holding special screenings in Toronto, Montreal, and hopefully other cities across the country. So please, make sure to visit our website for all the updates and I hope you all get a chance to see the films soon.
SPECIAL THANK YOUS
In the weeks before leaving to Burundi, we held an online fundraising drive for the BFC. The goal was to raise $5,000 to cover all the ground costs of the project, never honestly believing we would come anywhere close to that amount. Boy did it feel good to be wrong.
I can’t thank everyone enough – all the friends, family and supporters of the project who made this year possible. Most notably, a good friend and founder of the Canada-World Cinema Project, Parviz Yazdani, inspired me more than I can say when he offered to match all the money raised and gave us the opportunity to run the project they way we had planned. Without everyone’s donations, I’m sure I’d be coming home feeling emotionally and financially drained, unsure how or if we could move forward. Instead, the project feels healthy and hopeful for the future. So I thank you all again, for your support, both financially and emotionally. Every encouraging comment on the blog or by email was greatly appreciated, and I hope I finally get the time to respond to everyone in more detail once I’m home. In Canada – even though Burundi is starting to feel like a close second.
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August 28, 2010
Showtime
I’m not sure I can explain how unlikely it was that tonight’s gala would be such a massive success. Three hours before the curtain rose, I was honestly curled up in a ball, praying in utter exhaustion that we would even have films to show. After a 36-hour sleepless marathon of video editing and event coordination, technical challenges had me paralyzed with fear when we still couldn’t export the films two hours before the show. Everyone on the team knew that tonight we would either make or break our name in this town. We surprised a lot of people in 2007, but then effectively disappeared for three years. Now we were back and everyone was watching, eager to see if we could live up to our own standard.
Before we started, our M.C. (who created a minute-by-minute schedule) grew increasingly impatient as we waited for people to arrive for our 6:00pm start time. Three years in Burundi and somehow he still hadn’t come to accept African schedules. So by 6:30pm, when he decided he couldn’t wait any longer, we rolled through our introductions to a half filled room. Even our students occupying the front rows were arriving late, so our desired “show of force” began a little light.
The format of the night, however, meant we finished the first film at about 7:00pm and then held one of our many lively Q&A’s with the students. By the end of the second film, the room was so full that the M.C. made a point of getting everyone to turn around and take notice. Most impressive, however, was the crowd’s reaction to the films. People were bursting with laughter during the comedy, buzzing with shock after one film’s twist ending, and tickled with joy when our 78-year-old actor came on stage to make a few inebriated, incoherent comments (after yelling in Kirundi throughout his film; “That’s me! Right there, look!”).
I mentioned in my opening remarks on stage that the films from 2007 played in over 50 international festivals, and extensively in the U.S. – from New York to Hollywood. The idea of some small Burundian films playing in the centre of the film universe seemed surreal and was often referenced as a joke by the M.C. in the early proceedings. After the films played, however, it was a very different vibe. People were not only impressed, but inspired. The energy in the room was electric, and the variety of films shown, including our documentary Home Free (2009), proved we’re well on our way. Afterwards when ambassadors, agencies and the public came to talk to me, the reaction was what every filmmaker dreams of hearing – “we want to work with you”.
When everyone took to the stage, the sense of community and widespread accomplishment honestly felt like a new cultural wave sweeping the country. As everyone attached to the project said afterwards – the BFC has arrived. So even though I’m leaving in a few days, this time we want to make sure the project doesn’t go anywhere. So we celebrated tonight’s success and we’re already planning ways to carry on the momentum.
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August 26, 2010
Inauguration Day
With helicopters flying overhead, world media in attendance and most embassies closed, Burundi swore in their incumbent president today. A few of our students who work as journalists and videographers were even in attendance, while I tried to work around the defacto civic holiday and finally saw the early edits of our films for the first time. Caro has been admirably carrying the load for us in post-production, while I’ve been ridiculously busy getting my own crash course in diplomacy.
The other volunteers, and even people back home, constantly remind me that if we make the right contacts the BFC will get proper financial support. So for the past week, I’ve been booked solid with meetings looking for partners and sponsors to help us with the upcoming Gala on Saturday and our traveling film festival – CinémaMobile. After a barrage of rejections (almost always coated with encouragement and admiration for what we’re doing), we finally made an unlikely ally in the German ambassador’s wife. After she made just a few phone calls, we suddenly had the attention of some keys players in the international community and a rendez-vous that afternoon with Gilles Vaubours, the cultural attaché of the French embassy. We sat together for 30-minutes, and suddenly not only did we have our gala’s Master of Ceremony, but also a fully subsidized plane ticket for Papy to attend the Trouville Off-Courts Film Festival in a few weeks and represent our new films. When things do go good for us, they seem to go very good.
Our next task was to invite all the right people to our event with limited time and seats. We made a conservative list and delegated people to rush out the invitations yesterday, after a four-hour late-night date with the printer to get everything looking just right. The result is fairly impressive, even if the politics of who to actually invite is a bit messy. We have 300 seats, half of which are promised to our students and their family/friends. The rest went quick, and so we’re trying to encourage everyone to come regardless of whether or not they have a ticket. Gilles says that we shouldn’t expect more than half the seats filled, so we’re trying to be careful who we give them out to. I also ruined my favourite pair of pants getting them made, so I’ll be extra upset if the invitations fall into unappreciative hands.
The finish line is in sight and most things look to be in good shape for Saturday. Except unfortunately the films themselves, which are still quite a ways from being finished (and subtitled), despite Caro’s tireless efforts. We had originally scheduled the gala to happen tomorrow, but were forced to reschedule when we found out the screening room was already booked. It has since become available, but we ran with our blessing-in-disguise to give ourselves the extra day. Without a doubt, we’re going to need it.
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August 19, 2010
Power Struggle
The solitary process of editing got a lot worse this week when we had not one, but two power outages that lasted over six hours. After patiently waiting for far too long the first day, we tracked down a old generator and fought for another few hours to get it working. But when each team is only given a day to edit, losing this kind of time leads directly to me losing my mind (and probably some hair).
I was already feeling a little in the dark after Bridget flew out on the first day of editing. She was working right until the very last minute, designing our upcoming gala’s brochures, banners, certificates, and everything else we throw under her title of Artistic Director. But now that we’re married we’ve got bills to pay, so someone has go back and bring home the bacon – even if it’s my beloved vegetarian.
In an extremely welcomed turn of events, we got news a few weeks ago that a friend and video editor from Ottawa decided she could come to Burundi and teach for a few weeks after all. So eight hours after I saw Bridget off to the airport, I was back to pick up Carolyn Lecorre (“Caro”) who arrived late in the evening to Burundi – and Africa – for the first time. So like all great adventures and vacations, we welcomed her to the continent by trapping her behind a computer for the first three days, 12-hours-a-day, to help edit our films. Somehow she knew this would be the pace and still came, and it terrifies me to imagine how we could have gone on without her. With the compressed schedule this year (half the time we had in 2007), I’m pretty sure that by this point we would have been lights out.
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August 17, 2010
Bloody Hell
We might have avoided any real bodies at the morgue yesterday, but today we couldn’t escape the carnage. Our final film follows a guy who’s down on his luck and takes a job working for an abattoir. As we stepped over rivers of blood, around discarded remains and between machete wielding workers, the sights, smells and sounds were anything but make-believe. Our story and surroundings were deadly serious, and if you can believe it, the real-life violence didn’t end there.
Our day started in a busy market where thousands of fruit, vegetable and textile merchants gather each morning. We wanted to embrace the chaos as much as possible, and so we divided into small teams to shoot more hand-held action. As we finished one of our first set-ups, I even stayed behind fake-directing some students for a while so the crowd of over a hundred wouldn’t follow the real team shooting a new scene about 50 meters away.
About an hour later, things started to get out of control. Some idiotic new vodka company decided to set-up a half dozen stations and give out free samples in the blistering heat. Somewhat predictably, huge mobs formed and fights broke out, while we were stuck right in the middle of it all. I rained hell on a few of the representatives who were still trying to set up new stations near us, and we all headed deeper into the labyrinth of the market to isolate ourselves.
We finished our shots (not the alcoholic kind) and high-tailed it out of there in record time, heading for refuge in our next location – a slaughterhouse. Yeah, I know.
A number of live cows strolled the grounds outside, perfectly oblivious to the fate that awaited them. We used them to establish our setting and, both out of necessity and sensibility, didn’t shoot any of the really gory details. Keeping with the day’s theme of brutality, however, we did stage and film our own fight sequence. The employees welcomed the distraction between their outdoor showers, rinsing off the gore of just another day at the office.
I’ve brushed off a number of things here as “T.I.A.” (This Is Africa), but today’s events were a little harder to shake. My consolation prize, I guess, was that we somehow finished everything early and took a nice, relaxed, meat-filled lunch. Shooting is now done, and everyone successfully got a big, dirty taste of what goes into production. Both for film, and for food.
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August 16, 2010
I See Dead People
Want to know the funny thing about death? I hope so, because today we shot the BFC’s first comedy and it takes place in a morgue. The entire day was spent running around a hospital (the same one we used in Kivumvu: Basket Boy) putting an absurd twist on “grave” issues. So while we tried to keep the tone of the film light, the pressure on set was as high as ever.
Before we could even start, we waited almost two hours for our required chaperone to arrive. And instead of a shot list and schedule like Friday, the director had only prepared the most basic storyboard for the film, without properly grouping scenes by locations and actors. So while everyone sat outside the hospital grounds re-ordering the day, we cheated the opening scene and tried a couple tricks to introduce our main character’s journey imagining ghosts and dead people everywhere.
We wanted to loosen up the feel of the film with a mainly hand-held approach to achieve a different style from the others we’ve shot. The decision also helped us rush through a number of later scenes, but forced us to rely on one-take options in order to complete our day. Our permissions were running out, and we were all struggling to get out of our last location in time. But at least we got out, which usually isn’t the case when the morgue is your final destination.
Despite the mad dash at the end, when we all had some laughs looking at the footage before leaving. Our main actor was appropriately goofy, while the rest of the ensemble played it straight. Now I’ve got to just refocus for our final film tomorrow, and hope the pace of the last week doesn’t kill me.
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August 13, 2010
Burn Outs
Canadian cinema is filled with domestic dramas. There are probably cultural reasons why we focus on small personal stories, but I think it mainly comes down to the practicality of shooting in easy-to-control spaces. That was the case for our film today, which unfolded almost entirely indoors to tell the story of a girl who loses her way and becomes a prostitute. We were certainly sheltered from the chaos of the streets, but had no fewer difficulties as a result.
Lighting was the biggest headache, as we tried to simulate the night and create an appropriately moody atmosphere for our two main actresses. That would have been a welcomed challenge, if all three of our light bulbs hadn’t burned out over the course of a few hours. So the team had to ramp up the creativity and I had to dig into my pockets a little deeper than anticipated to cover the unforeseen costs. I couldn’t complain too loud, however, since I was personally responsible for at least one broken bulb – undoubtedly the result being a little burned out myself.
Then, as we prepared for a steamy hotel scene with our star “lady of the night”, our star photographer, Bridget, felt ill and had to go home and lie down in our own hotel room. The rest of us eventually did get through the day – and part of the night – even capping everything off with a final club scene that got the entire crew dancing as “extras”. Busting a move was a welcomed change of pace, and a nice little release before the weekend. If only I would have had that other Canadian there to help me represent our inhibited “culture” on the dance floor.
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August 12, 2010
At Rainbow’s End
Bold colours are quintessential East Africa. Lush green vegetation, deep red earth, and today, a small cloud of neon blue buzzing around the outskirts of Bujumbura. The T-shirts donated by The Sam Group in Ottawa are both a hit with the students and a great way to track them. Luckily, that task was a lot easier with the most organized group the BFC has had yet.
A detailed shot list and realistic shooting schedule gave us some creative flexibility instead of rushing and worrying all day. Of course, there’s always a trade-up in life, and yesterday’s stars were sorely missed as we coached our 78-year-old lead actor through a painfully foreign process of multiple set-ups and line repetitions. He soldiered on though, often ad-libbing lines to the mixed frustration and amusement of the students.
The film is based on the true story of a man who fled to Tanzania in 1972 after coming home to find his wife and daughter murdered. He left grabbing nothing but a single spear for protection, and returned to Burundi last year the same way. It’s a timely topic and important metaphor I’m glad we’ll be exploring. It’s also the first time we’ll be shooting in HD, since one of the students wanted to use a camera he was familiar with and had access to. I took the opportunity to let him play to his comforts and actually appreciated being able to take a more hands-off approach to teaching.
By sundown, I was also to happy to see how well the camera worked in low-light. In a home with no electricity or running water, we needed every advantage we could get to maintain some mood and quality to the images. The drab colours in a small concrete room are certainly the antithesis of the vibrancy outside, but their somber details tell an equally important story about life over here.
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August 11, 2010
They may not have been ready, but away we went shooting the first of our five short films. Nothing came easy today as we struggled to keep an overly optimistic schedule, trying to set both the pace and standard for the days ahead. A bustling market, a popular restaurant and patient mechanic shop all added to the exhaustion and eventual relief of wrapping day one of production.
The disadvantage of being first into the flame was obvious in everyone’s lack of preparation. Key decisions hadn’t been made, permissions were being finalized at the last minute and lines were being learned on the fly. That said, we shot the final scene first and it was clear from the start that our main actors were going to be serious and convincing. I’m happy to say they are also students in the class.
To make a demanding day even more complicated, the director ambitiously borrowed a jib and dolly track from one of her producer friends. While the initiative was great in theory, the reality of using the delicate equipment with our short timetable proved almost impossible. We did, however, manage to retrofit the jib to accomplish one shot that, while not perfect, I think will turn out to be usable and worthwhile.
By the end of the day, the “joke” was that apparently we were all observing Ramadan, like two of our students on the team. As the sun fell, the night was the first objective sign that yes, we had gone too long without lunch. Now it’s a short rest and recovery – hopefully a full six hours sleep – before the whole thing plays out again tomorrow.
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