Kingpin Film Locations

Digital Nation: 'Viva Riva!' … think 'Harder They Come' in Africa

Remember the jolt of excitement you experienced watching “The Harder They Come,” “City of God” and “Amores Perros” for the first time? How raw depictions of violence, sex, corruption and poverty flowed organically from the directors’ choices of actors, locations and music, whose singularity couldn’t have been faked or synthesized?

These stories may have been fictional, but your unfamiliarity with the streets, faces and emotions on display – the shockingly meager value put on human life — made it seem as if you’d pulled off on the wrong freeway ramp and, within moments, were surrounded by abandoned cars and buildings, gang-bangers and crack whores.

That’s how you’ll feel, again, watching “Viva Riva!” If the title of Djo Tunda Wa Munga’s debut feature suggests comedy or madcap adventure, it’s worth knowing ahead of time that “Viva Riva!,” while undeniably exciting and occasionally funny, is more likely to elicit gasps of horror than laughter from audiences.

The movie is set in Kinshasa, the capital and largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. With a population of 10 million people, it’s roughly the same size of Rio de Jainero and Mexico City. It is 20 times larger than Kingston, Jamaica, where most of “The Harder They Come” was staged. As the movies made in these cities suggest, the disparity between wealthy and impoverished residents is huge, and crime is virtually out of control in the poorer districts.

What most Americans know of Kinshasa can be summarized in two words: Ali, Foreman.

Although a poster from that monumental sporting event, Rumble in the Jungle, hangs from the wall of a police official’s office, in “Viva Riva!,” Munga doubts the boxing match had any lasting significance on the residents of Kinshasa. Even though an injury to Foreman pushed the fight back a month, very little money from foreign investors, fans and the media found its way into the hands of people who weren’t friends of the ruthless dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko. The country had only been independent for 14 years, he reminds, and was called Zaire. (In 1997, during the First Congo War, forces loyal to Laurent-Désiré Kabila ousted Mobutu, and the country’s name reverted to Democratic Republic of the Congo.)  

The events described in “Viva Riva!” reflect the turmoil and uncertainty that has kept the DRC from progressing for most of the last two decades.

Bitter & Backtracking: Hope We're All Still Friends

The completed short films from the Baltimore 48-Hour Film Project will be screened tomorrow night at the Charles Theater.  Thankfully, I’ve already flown back to Austin and will not be in attendance.  Although I haven’t actually seen the final edited version of our film, my general impression is that it’s embarrassingly bad.  After the competition ended and the films were handed over to the judges, I received a flurry of text messages from people asking how it went, as if I could possibly explain what transpired that weekend via text message.  It would take a hell of a lot more than 160 characters to convey the sheer chaos of making a movie in 48 hours, especially when those involved are amateurs at best.  To tell the story right, I’d need several hours and a whole slew of hand gestures (some of them offensive).  But for those of you with a short attention span, here is my best attempt at a concise version: Underprepared. Technical difficulties. Creative differences. Yelling. Endless filming. Relentless heat. Cast and crew resort to alcohol. Only camera goes missing. More yelling. Found the camera. Are we quitting? Please say yes. I know, let’s change the ending for the tenth time! No continuity between shots. Editing nightmare. Tornado warning! Last scene accidentally deleted. Made no sense anyway. Disqualified for being late. Exhausted. Starving. Hope we’re all still friends. On Friday evening, our core team of six gathered at the kick-off event in downtown Baltimore.  At precisely 6:45pm, our team leader got up on stage and picked our genre out of a hat, handing the little slip of paper to the festival organizer, who announced our fate into the microphone: “Film de Femme.”  (Meaning a film that features one or more strong female characters.)  I let out a triumphant cry.   Not only had we avoided the dreaded “Musical or Western,” but my strength as a screenwriter was strong female protagonists!  In my excitement, I failed to notice that the guys on my team were having a completely different reaction.  They stood in disappointed silence until one of them finally said, “I hate it.”  They wanted to trade in “Film de Femme” for the mysterious Wild Card genre (which turned out to be “Time Travel”), but with a little persuasion from the girls on our team, they eventually warmed up to the idea.

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