Forgotten Crisis

          This film is about a hotel manager in Rwanda, Paul Rusesabagina, who is caught in a military coup that ends up in a mass genocide in Rwanda. He starts protecting Tutsi refugees’ that are being targeted in this mass killing.  This includes his neighbors, family, and friends where there is no place for them to stay without being targeted.  There are three different ethnic groups in Rwanda and the Hutu were targeted the Tutsi for their past persecution and abuse of power. The Hutu dictator  Juvenal Habyarimana was murdered when a treaty was supposed to be signed between these two feuding ethnic groups.  

         
     The article by Anthony Daniels brought up a very good points about being informed about the fighting in Rwanda before seeing the film. The film seems to simplify and summarize the fighting between the Tutsi and Hutu which make sense in a fiction film, it would be impossible to go through the history of Rwanda to contextualize the genocide that took place.  I think his last line was very true, "There is still no substitue for reading to inform yourself about the world."

          
      The article written by Leshu Torchin brought up great points about how in the film how the media was portrayed during this genocide. The hunt for such atrocious images to help fuel action or intervention in Rwanda. It seems unbelievable that nothing was done to try and intervene and help this country. It is also interesting to note that in Rwanda there is little value in the global political economy. It sort of holds true though for other countries facing dire conflicts in natural resource rich countries that the western world does not intervene. 

          
          The New York Times article about Africa Fatigue presents interesting points on how Africa is portrayed to the western culture. It brings up that after seeing so many films with Africans that have dire circumstances that we feel guilty rather than wanting to rise up and do something. Especially fiction films are produced for US economy about Africa are made by people that have no closeness to the issue and are not usually African. Manhole Dargis brings up a valid point at the end of the article, “But it is naive to think that these films, including a fair share of documentaries, are being made on behalf of Africa and its people; they are made for us.”

           
             I think it would be interesting to talk about in discussion about what is the reasoning behind on how Africa is portrayed negatively and why is it considered a whole continents issues besides individual countries issues.  Another topic would be interesting is the problems in specific countries created by the colonialism that happened maybe particularly in Rwanda. 

         
            I think the film portrayed the genocide correctly, I think it is good that they converged the lines into the hotel owned by a Belgium. It connected this film to the outside world and showed how everyone was afraid to intervene even down to point of calling it a genocide. It seems weird to have an actual criteria to be able to call something genocide. When a group of people are being specifically targeted and killed it is genocide. There shouldn’t be a fear on whether or not to call it that for their own conscience. 

Terms:

Subterfuge: deceit in order to achieve one's goal.