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Film Screening & Discussion: Cemetery State

A Film Screening and Discussion with Filip DeBoeck, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Leuven, Belgium

Friday, April 01, 2011
12:00 PM - 3:00 PM
314 Royce Hall
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA United States

In Cemetery State, filmmaker Filip DeBoeck invites us on a bewildering tour of the cemetery of Kintambo, one of the oldest and largest cemeteries in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Over the years, the city has increasingly invaded the cemetery, and shantytowns 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 urban authorities officially closed the cemetery two decades ago, the people from Camp Luka continue to bury their dead there. This astonishing film follows Pap Mayaula and his small group of gravediggers through an intimate portrait of their daily dealings with the dead. The film introduces us to the children of the State: the youth of Camp Luka. For them, mourning rituals and funerals have become moments of upheaval and contestation of official social and political orders. For these urban youth, burials have become occasions to criticize elders, politicians and preachers who are blamed for the pitiful state of affairs in the city and country.

Filip DeBoeck is Professor of Anthropology and Coordinator of the Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa (IARA) at University of Leuven (Belgium). Filip is a well-known anthropologist, whose book with Marie-Françoise Plissart, Kinshasa: Tales of the Invisible City, has been extremely well- received. Filip has also received the Golden Lion Award for the Belgian Art and Architecture Pavilion that he and Koen Van Synghel created for the Venice Biennale in 2004. As the coordinator of the Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa (lARA), a Research Unit of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Leuven, DeBoeck 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.

Cost: Free and open to the public.

Special Instructions

Free and open to the public. Pay-by-space and all-day ($10) parking available in lot 5.

For more information please contact

UCLA African Studies Center Tel: 310-825-3686
africa@international.ucla.edu

Sponsor(s): African Studies Center, The UC African Studies MRG