tagged w/ Beyond the Gates
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Not only did the film Beyond the Gates shoot on the actual site in Kigali depicted as a temporary safe haven during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, but a large number of the film's cast and crew were also survivors -- which created a unique situation on set.
"I went out there thinking that this would be a difficult movie to make," the film's star Hugh Dancy told Current. "I was steeling myself for it. And then I got out there, and two things happened. One, it was actually a joyful experience, because there was so many people who were welcoming, and just throwing themselves into the experience with such positivity. And then the second thing was that I actually talked to these people."
Dancy listened as extras, assistant directors, wardrobe assistants, transportation captains, and nurses on set recounted the "unbelievable lists of appalling things" that happened to their families during the genocide -- long laundry lists of relatives lost.
"And they related this in absence of any emotion, in a conversational tone," he said. "What choice did they have? I suppose I thought that if any one of us had suffered this much loss, that we would break. But it was so widespread, the amount of death, so huge. So many people had lost their families, their neighbors, and by default, their entire support networks. It's when you attempted to understand the enormity of why did this happen, or how did this happen, that I saw the beginnings of emotion."
Dancy didn't try to channel the depths of emotions expresed or not expressed, since his character had a unique blend of ignorance and empathy. Joe Connor had only been in Africa for a few months, and had never before experienced anything of the magnitude of the events depicted in the film. "I was tempted to be a bit more nuanced about what was getting through to him," Dancy said, "and to show the balance shifting, but that's not the same as the huge weight of trauma of the people around me. The extras had a better idea than me, because realistically, they weren't having to fake it. I was outgunned."
One of the complications, however, from having real Rwandans working on the film was that it meant some of those who participated in the genocide ended up working alongside some who survived.
Statistically, there were probably people involved on both sides," Dancy said. "It's a fact of the country. And you can't really ask. It's taboo to ask if someone had committed those crimes. They had instituted a blanket rule that everyone is Rwandan now -- no one is Hutu, no one is Tutsi, and to even talk about being one is kind of a crime."
That's because the current government believes to differentiate between Hutu and Tutsi would be a form of discrimination. "That helps you survive, but it doesn't help you move on," Dancy said. "At some point, you have to be able to look back at the past, but they're stymied for understandable reasons."
The filmmakers were stymied as well, especially when rumors floated around that particular people on the crew had been involved in the genocide in some way.
"At one point, some of the extras started singing, and that wasn't us directing them to sing, they just all knew that song," Dancy said. "And it may have been a song that the militia sang. And there would be people who it would be traumatic for them to hear that song sung. So we tried to handle that with sensitivity, to avoid that kind of tension."
The notion that the people of the country are all Rwandans comes up twice in the film -- once as a positive, and once as a negative. Father Christopher (played by John Hurt) encounters a man making a list of Tutsis, presumably for a list of potential targets, and the priest responds, "Here, we just call them Rwandans," meaning they it shouldn't make a difference which ethnic group to which they belong. Later in the film, after the massacre has begun and the Tutsis are seeking asylum, a French UN soldier blocks them from an evacutation, screaming, "No Rwandans." "They certainly weren't interested in figuring out which Rwandan was which," Dancy said.
Beyond the Gates was shot in Rwanda on the ten year anniversary of the genocide, and the fact that the country was still standing was "amazing," Dancy said.
"There we were," he said, "and we were working with Rwandans who gave themselves completely to the production, despite this terrible, terrible thing. And it must have been incredibly difficult for them. These people have been through horrific experiences, and yet they're not going to impose their gravitas on you when they could be having a good time. They were excited to be on a film set. It was wonderful to work with people who were determined to get it right, and determined to have their story be heard."
Beyond the Gates airs on Current TV on Friday, January 28 at 12 am ET/9 pm PT.Not only did the film Beyond the Gates shoot on the actual site in Kigali depicted as... more
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You can’t do a movie on genocide without showing a massacre – but how to do it? For Beyond the Gates, about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, director Michael Caton-Jones chose to treat it less like a message movie, and more like a thriller.
“It is a message film in some respects,” the film’s star Hugh Dancy told Current, “but if we start with, ‘This will be our message,’ we’re going to be doomed. The fact that the story is important does not mean it will tell itself. What drew me to the film was the script, and the shape of it, and the structure of it. I thought it did a brilliant job of building tension -- like in a good horror movie, without showing the monster.”You can’t do a movie on genocide without showing a massacre – but how to... more
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Beyond the Gates (known as Shooting Dogs in the U.K.) tackles a real-life incident from the 1994 Rwandan genocide, where a school in Kigali housed some 2,500 Tutsi refugees for a brief time before the UN abandoned them to be murdered by Hutu militias.
The Roman Catholic school, the École Technique Officelle, doubled as a base for the UN to supervise the peace between the Hutu and Tutsi, before the genocide started. As someone bearing witness to the events that take place, the well-intentioned English teacher Joe Connor, played by Hugh Dancy, becomes the conduit for the audience.
Beyond the Gates (known as Shooting Dogs in the U.K.) tackles a real-life incident... more
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