COM Professor Confronts Genocide Through Film
COM’s Sam Kauffmann competes in the Slamdance Film Festival with his short documentary Massacre at Murambi.
When Sam Kauffmann visited Rwanda’s Kigali Memorial Centre, which commemorates that country’s 1994 genocide, in 2006, he was deeply struck by what he saw. “It’s the most haunting memorial you can imagine,” says Kauffmann, a College of Communication associate professor of film. “Unlike other memorials that have information and photographs, this is basically a series of buildings where the Tutsi were massacred.”
Kauffmann decided to spread the word about genocide — and the fact that it still happens today. The result is the five-minute documentary Massacre at Murambi, one of 67 short films picked from among 2,000 to show at the 14th annual Slamdance Film Festival, in Park City, Utah, January 17 to 25.
The Kigali center, which opened in April 2004, is a memorial to the victims of the genocide, estimated at between 800,000 and a million people. More than 250,000 victims are buried at the site.
Kauffmann filmed the documentary during a five-week stay in Rwanda as a Fulbright senior specialist teaching at the National University of Rwanda. Massacre at Murambi challenges viewers to think about the genocide in Rwanda, particularly in light of the current genocide in Darfur. “The film is basically saying, ‘You’ve dropped the ball,’ ” he says. “You’ve said, ‘Never again,’ and yet here we are in Darfur.”
Kauffmann’s film has won the Grand Prix Award at the Crested Butte Reel Fest and the Global Justice Award at the Media That Matters Film Festival. At Slamdance, where it will show on January 21 and January 24, the film will compete for the Grand Prix Award in the documentary shorts category.
Rebecca McNamara can be reached at ramc@bu.edu.
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