Antigone Film Series: The Phantoms of Lovanium

*Livestream link: http://www.twitch.tv/screensociety*

In collaboration with Screen/Society, the Franklin Humanities Institute is happy to announce an international film series on Antigone as part of its World Arts series. These films are not strict adaptations, but each takes up the themes of political violence and contested burials in ways that resonate with the ancient tragedy.

By the trees in the campus of the University of Kinshasa, this documentary focuses on the efforts of a popular Congolese painter to remember a student revolt that was violently repressed by the authoritarian regime of Mobotu in the 60s. As happens in Sophocles' ancient tragedy, which makes more than one appearance in the film, grief has been interrupted by the state. The public act of collective remembrance, into which the current students at the University of Kinshasa are invited, exposes the ways in which the ancient Lovanium continues to haunt the Democratic Republic of Congo with its colonial afterlives.

Introduced by Astrid L.B. van Weyenberg
Assistant Professor in Cultural Analysis
Leiden University
with Zoom discussion afterwards