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Last Updated: May 30th, 2008 - 11:49:13 |
“Lumo,” a one-hour documentary premiering Tuesday, Sept. 18, on PBS (check local listings), puts a face, heart and humanity to the heinous crime of rape as a tool of terror in war-torn central Africa.
Taped over the course of months, filmmakers Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and Nelson Walker follow a 20-year-old woman named Lumo Sinai, who has been so violently raped that she is incontinent and perhaps unable to bear children. The round-faced woman with big eyes tells her story of walking with a friend on the road to her village, where they were kidnapped by soldiers, taken to a remote area, gang-raped and then discarded by the side of a road. In the area of eastern Congo, where her village is located, violent rape is a frequent tool of terror used by various groups of marauding soldiers vying for control of the region. “They really destroyed us,” says Lumo, often with downcast eyes, of her nightmare.
This documentary, which is part of the “P.O.V.” series, explains briefly that the region where Lumo lives, far from the capital Kinshasa, has served as a battleground for Congolese insurgents and armies spilling over from conflicts in bordering states. So many countries and factions have been a part of this ongoing conflict, which has killed 4 million people since 1998, that it has been dubbed “Africa’s First World War.” Most significantly, these bands of soldiers include thousands of brutal Hutu militiamen, known as the Interhamwe among locals, who were responsible for the murder of nearly 1 million Tutsis and others over the course of three months in 1994 during the Rwandan genocide, (which was depicted in the movies “Hotel Rwanda” and “Sometimes in April”).
This movie follows Lumo and other women as they attempt to heal themselves physically and psychologically at an African-run hospital and program called HEAL Africa in the city of Goma. Many of the women at the hospital, including Lumo, suffer from fistula, a chronic condition caused by a tear in the wall between the vagina and bladder. Lumo explains how, after her attack, she was rejected by the family of her fiancé, her engagement was broken and her family was forced to return the dowry for her. She adds that, at home, she was supported by her mother but shunned by her siblings who complained that she smelled bad.
One member of the hospital staff, which works hard to also improve the emotional and mental state of the women, says that these rape survivors, most of whom are young and have their whole lives ahead of them, are often still ostracized in their communities when their return from the hospital. She also points out the frightening fact that the very same soldiers who attacked these women are still at large, often on the same roads and near the same villages where these women return.
We learn the complexities of Lumo’s story and watch it unfold as if we are observers privy to intimate moments and conversations between the women, many of whom are captured in that chatty and playful transition between girlhood and adulthood. This is not fancy movie-making. It looks quite low-budget. But, most importantly, the filmmakers convey what is heart-breaking, as well as what is courageous and brave, in this nightmare and in these women.
This review also appeared on www.BET.com. Please support us by ordering Esther Iverem's We Gotta Have It: Twenty Years of Seeing Black at the Movies, 1986-2006 (Thunder’s Mouth Press, April 2007)at Amazon.com or at your favorite bookstore. Thanks!
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