Ndahayo’s ‘The Rwandan Night’ out soon

U.S-based Rwandan filmmaker, Gilbert Ndahayo, is set to release his 6th movie titled The Rwandan night. This film that will be released July 15th was shot in 2006 over the course of two nights of commemoration in Kigali.The Rwandan night is a 45-minutes art-ethnographic documentary film that explores the world of survivors of the Genocide against Tutsis. It will be translated in 27 languages‘In The Rwandan night, darkness haunts the souls and memories of genocide survivors. At first, many voices bear witness randomly. Their memories are emotional. The absence of light resurrects their past. Finally, they understand survival and how to move on’ explained Ndahayo while speaking to The SundayTimes yesterday.Like condemned poet, Gilbert Ndahayo opens his film with a one-minute and half deeply felt white text on black screen. Ndahayo confines himself to the original thought of the oft-cited Greek Hippocrates in the familiar Latin Ars longa, vita brevis - “Art is long, life is short” – clearly flipped to refer to the art of healing. The filmmaker rivets his poetry to the sound of a Rwandan dramatic trumpet. Gilbert Ndahayo is also set to finish his master’s degree from the prestigious Columbia University grand film school in New York. The 32 year old discovered his true passion for cinema in 2006 when he got an opportunity to make his first film ‘Scars Of My Days’, with the collaboration of Swedish Institute who were in Rwanda. His debut film ‘Scars of My Days’ premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2007, in the presence of an audience that included President Paul Kagame, former U.S President Bill Clinton, and Hollywood celebrities Robert DeNiro, Whoopi Goldberg and Everybody Loves Raymond’s producer Jane Rosenthal (co-founder of Tribeca Film Festival). The film ‘Scars of My Days’ won First Time Director’s Golden Impala at Amakula Film Festival in 2006 and, it has been screened in more than 20 film festivals around the world.His second film titled ‘Behind This Convent’ won the 2008 Verona Award for Best African Feature Film. However, according to Ndahayo, it all started in 2009 when Cape Winelands Film Festival premiered his films ‘Scars of My Days’, and ‘Behind This Convent in South Africa. His other film, ‘Rwanda: Beyond The Deadly Pit’ film also premiered in 2010 at Pan African film Festival in Los Angeles, where it was nominated for Best African Documentary Feature and programmed in “Thought-Provoking Films” at the prestigious IDFA, the same year..

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Ndahayo’s ‘The Rwandan Night’ out soon