IN CINEMA

CONGO IN HARLEM 15: LE DAMIER - PAPA NATIONAL OYÉ (THE DRAUGHTSMEN CLASH) + SPEECH FOR A MELTING STATUE
Friday, October 13th at 7PM
Tickets:  $15 General Admission | $7 Reduced

Le Damier – Papa National Oyé  (The Draughtsmen Clash)

Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda 1996, 40 min. (French with English subtitles(

Set in a fictitious African country, LE DAMIER (THE DRAUGHTSMEN CLASH) is a humorous political allegory that tells the story of a sleepless dictator who spends the night playing checkers with a pot-smoking vagabond who claims to be the grand champion. However, the rules of the game entail the opponents howling vulgar and foul obscenities at one another. The champion proceeds to insult, and trounce the dictator. His reward and fate will not surprise anyone. 

Restored in 2K in 2021 by NYU Tisch, in association with Villa Albertine – French Embassy in the United States and the Cinémathèque Afrique of the Institut Français.

Preceded by:

Speech for a Melting Statue

Collectif Faire-Part, 2023, 10 min. (French with English subtitles)

In June 2020, thousands of people took to the streets in Brussels to make a fist against police brutality and institutional racism in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. For a moment, it seemed that some demonstrators would take down the statue of colonial king Leopold II in a nearby square. For now the sculpture is still standing, but an optimistic poet prepares her speech for the day it will be removed.

Archival images of colonial monuments that arrive in a museum in Kinshasa, RDC are paired with a ceremonial text by poet Marie Paule Mugeni. The voice-over presents the official removal of a Brussel’s colonial statue as if scheduled for the very next day. However, in opposition to Kinshasa, there are no concrete plans for the statues’ takedown up to now.