THE BACK ROW MANIFESTO by Tom Hall

"Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen." -- Robert Bresson

MUNYURANGABO Heads To Theaters

The winner of the 2008 Best Narrative Feature Jury Prize at our very own Sarasota Film Festival, Lee Isaac Chung’s Munyurangabo finally lands a theatrical relelase this week at the Anthology Film Archives courtesy of our good friends at Film Movement. My thoughts on the film are up at Hammer To Nail, but I can’t say enough good things about this movie.

I was recently reading Philip Gourevitch’s New Yorker article of May 4 (regsitration req’d), describing his recent return to Rwanda, more than a decade after the publication his incredible We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. It was a powerful reminder of the trauma of the Rwandan genocide and it provides an excellent context for the film and the changes that have taken place since Munyurangabo was completed. A podcast with Gourevitch is up now at the New Yorker website. Give a listen; Rwanda continues to be an important story, one that is always changing as the people grow, develop and move forward as a nation.