After Berlin last February, and Los Angeles, San Francesco and NYC last May, Viva Riva by outsider producer and director Djo Tunda Wa Munga is following its European cruise. From 10 August to 21 August, it is the only African film competing for the two prizes of the World cinema Amsterdam,Netherlands.
Congolese filmmaker Jo Munga is one of those filmmakers who can still show some African colours on world screening. He is well known as a documentary producer and did well in particular with Congo four acts, the collective film directed by Dieudo Hamadi, Kiripi Katembo Siku et Divita Wa Lusala and also with State of mind by Munga Tunda Djo
It is all about Congolese stories like Viva Riva the new film, which is a feature film inspired by the underground life of Kinshasa. After helping other directors to tell their stories it seems that Jo Munga wanted to tell his own.
The film seems to be intended to be more entertaining for the audience. The filmmaker put all ingredients together; fight between gangsters, a lot of action and shooting, music and dancing scenes in Kinshasa’s night clubs and slums, quite hard erotic scenes. All the action is compiled according to a romantic love story and melodrama involving two main characters Riva (Patsha Bay) the good burglar and Nora (Manie Malone) the fatal beauty of the city. It’s all about love, money and criminality.
If the film is made of a very stereotyped crime thriller story, yet it is also deeply inspired by the real life in Kinshasa. The actors, coached by French actress Sandrine Bonnaire look sincere and authentic.
A lot of scenes are shot in real locations and with real people and give the film a documentary dimension: scenes of the city, gas stations, and bus stations for instance create the atmosphere of the film. All these are real images contrasting with the violent and erotic scenes which are more like a fantasia.
The film is typical Nollywood product: a mixture of the African reality on the one hand, and the cliché scenes from Hollywood gangster films like Scarface by Hawks, Reservoir dogs and Pulp Fiction by Tarantino.
Yet all of this gives an idea about the life and the dreams of young Congolese and Africans of these days. The film got six trophies at the 7th African Academy Film Award 2010.
http://www.monitor.co.ug/LifeStyle/Theatre+++Cinema/-/691234/1221754/-/6kb1sa/-/index.html
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