Film screening: "Makala"

Description

A screening of the film Makala, an extraordinarily revealing and surprisingly gorgeous look at everyday life for a charcoal salesman in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

French documentary filmmaker Emmanuel Gras follows 28-year-old Kabwita Kasongo through the entire process of making and selling charcoal. What sets Makala (the Swahili word for "charcoal") apart from other documentaries about workers in developing countries is its sheer filmic quality: Kabwita's simple but challenging objective to get the coal to the big city and sell enough to buy supplies to build a house for himself and his family has the dramatic force of the great humanist films from Bicycle Thieves on down, while Gras's virtuosic widescreen camerawork constantly anchors his individual struggle in the larger context of the Congo's breathtakingly beautiful landscape and its rapidly shifting economy.

This event is part of the Johns Hopkins 2019 Tournées Film Festival. The film is presented by Pier Larson, a professor of History at Johns Hopkins.

The Tournées Film Festival is made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S., the Centre National du Cinéma et de l'Image Animée (CNC), the Franco-American Cultural Fund, Florence Gould Foundation, and Highbrow Entertainment.

Festival sponsors include the Johns Hopkins University Department of German and Romance Languages and Literatures, the Program in Film and Media Studies, the Center for Advanced Media Studies, the Alexander Grass Humanities Center, the French Program, and the Graduate Representative Organization.