Eric Kabera first met the celebrated German filmmaker Volker Schlondorff a few years ago, during then German president Horst Kahler’s visit to Rwanda.

Schlondorff is best known for his surrealistic black comedy film, The Tin Drum, a 1979 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Günter Grass.

The film won the Palme d'Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1980 at the 52nd Academy Awards.

"He (Schlondorff) came and taught our students and asked me what I want from him and I asked him to just share his knowledge, which he did,” Kabera recalls. 

"He went ahead to lobby the German government to support the initiatives we were undertaking, and that was actually the beginning of the Rwanda Media Project (RMP).”

Cooperation pays off

It’s against this backdrop that the European Film center in Babelsberg recently organized a Master Class on Documentary Filmmaking and Postproduction From January 4 to January 29, 2016 at KWETU Film Institute.

Participants got lectures and exercises in the field of production, directing, camera, sound, editing, sound design, post-production and sound design, and each had to produce two short films.

The master class is a partnership project between the Kwetu Film Institute, DW Akademie, and European Film Centre Babelsberg (EFB). It is supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and Center for International Migration and Development (CIM).

"I did a master class two years ago about production with professor Klaus Keil of the Rwanda Media Project and we kept in touch over the last two years while I was doing my masters. He told me to apply for this course because he thought it would be a good experience for me and I did. Luckily my film submission was chosen. My film is about the significance of cows in African society, mainly in Rwanda,” explains Ceke Mathenge, a budding filmmaker and one of the students that graduated at the end of the master class on Friday evening.

Even with her Master’s degree in film from the University of Edinburgh, coupled with a fairly long background in film directing, Mathenge was all praises for the master class.

"I learnt a great deal about post-production. I have a few films I made a few years ago that had been stuck in production and I didn’t know what the problem with those films was. This master class helped me understand the different stages of filmmaking more deeply. I also learnt a great deal about sound mixing because my film requires a lot of good sound.”

"Basically it was a mix of giving some input, showing the students a few films, but mostly asking questions –showing them the films and asking what they think,” explained Max Kerkhoff, one of the workshop instructors and mentors.

"They shot their own films as well, so we also helped them in the shooting and editing.”

Kerkhoff says he ended up on the project "by accident”. 

"I was editing a film together with Volker Schlondorff, who is the initiator the German part of the program. He knew I’d been giving workshops in Africa, mostly West Africa, and he was very happy with my work as an editor, so he advised me to find out about Kwetu Film Institute and I did just that. I’m happy to actually be in a real film school in Rwanda, and interact with students who have their own film ideas and try to push them out of their comfort zones because then you learn something new.”

This is a continuation of our program in teaching young film makers on techniques of making films, in this case documentaries,” explained Kabera.

"At the end of the day what we are trying to do is get as many partners and institutions as possible to get involved.

It is within this framework of support and partnership that some Rwandan filmmakers will be going for the Berlin Film Festival in Germany in February.”

"I loved the students. They are brave, straight forward, and they work very hard, from 9:30 am everyday till 5:30 pm. Then they stay behind asking you questions and debating with you. During production and post production periods, they are here until 2:00 am! That means they do have obsessions,” explained Professor Klaus Keil, professor of film production and media economics at the film university in Berlin Barbesberg, the oldest film institution in Germany.

The first master class was held in May 2014, and it was about production and producing.

"We produced two documentary films, one of which received an award at the Australia Film Festival plus $ 5,000, which is a great success,” he explained.

I learnt a lot from this master class. In Rwanda people know how to tell stories, but it’s not yet what we can put on the international market. One has to go through all the steps like pre-production, how you develop the story, and the production phase so this was really good because we never had the chance to go through all those phases of movie production,” explained Munderese Viateur, another of the master class graduates.

For his part, Kabera concludes by reiterating the need for close cooperation with the powers that be: "We are actually in strong and direct discussions with government institutions like RDB, because they want to have all these initiatives not to be scattered but be focused on the government national agenda of events. Like you have festivals like KigaliUp and FESPAD, all of these have to fit in a yearly calendar so that we do not do things on our own and struggle with things like expertise which RDB has.” 

editorial@newtimes.co.rw