The Politics of Art & Authenticity

In Kinshasa, thousands of children are denounced by their families as witches and thrown out into the streets at the young ages of 4 and 5 years old. Kinshasa Kids is a story of survival, of growing up alone, of growing up too young. The children that the film centers around are from the ages ten to thirteen, and their stories are well beyond their years. Kinshasa Kids is about making do with what you have, even when you don’t have anything. It’s about making something to have.

A small group of children form a bond, a brother/sisterhood on the streets, and they help each other out. They work hard jobs to make a little bit of money so they can eat, and they steal and get stolen from. In the middle of the film, the kids sit around a fire and talk about the future. They talk about making enough money to put themselves through school, help their siblings, make sure that they give their own children a better life. And this is how “The Devil Does Not Exist”, the children’s musical band, is formed.

The kids enlist the help of Bebson, a musician who lives on the streets. They work endlessly on their first hit, “Boom Boom Chaka”. And they get let down, time and time again by the unfairness of the streets. The corruption in Kinshasa is expected, but watching these innocent children’s hopeful dreams get shattered, time and time again, is heartbreaking.

At the end of the film, filmmaker Marc-Henri Wajnberg got up and answered some questions about the movie. He made this film to raise awareness about the horrors of Kinshasa, and what happens in the streets. His documentary style is extremely effective because the viewers actually get to see, first hand, what the streets of Kinshasa are like. Although the film was scripted, it is truly reflective of the day-to-day goings on in the streets. Wajnberg was personally arrested four or five times a day while filming, so police corruption was a theme in the movie. He saw little girls raped in the middle of the night, so in the movie, a little girl was raped. He saw kids trying to make it, black and white, in a city of gray, so that is what the movie is about. Certain parts were unscripted though, and I think those parts are what makes Wajnberg an auteur. Fitting in the raw footage is not easy, and it makes the film much more complex and rich. I am sure that this very raw style of film will be a signature element in Wajnberg’s future films, because it shows, without telling, societal norms and practices that cannot be given over as effectively in any other way.

The movie ends with the kids putting on their first concert, with equipment that they paid for legally, and the audience dancing and putting money in a hat. The reverberations of Boom Boom Chaka are heard around Kinshhasa, and the message of those words, that ANYTHING is possible, brings tremendous hope to the viewer. This upbeat end to such a dire film also makes Wajnberg an auteur. It is a real surprise, and it does not mean that tomorrow will be a better day, but it does contribute to the message of the movie—you need to make something to have, and anyone can do it.