Several decades of media images depicting violence, conflict, and human despair have done little to dispel the “heart of darkness” from contemporary representations of the Congo. While many colonial-era clichés have—at least in the most obvious sense—receded from view, they have been replaced by what one might call their modern counterparts: the discourse of the “failed state” and associated notions of social, political, and economic disorder. Indeed, the historian Theodore Trefon, in the introduction to Reinventing Order in the Congo (Zed Books, 2004), notes how Kinshasa, the country’s capital, “is often portrayed as a forsaken black hole characterized by calamity, chaos, confusion, and a bizarre form of social cannibalism where society is its own prey” (1). For documentary filmmakers willing to negotiate the legacy of their discipline’s close historical association with the “colonial gaze,” the DRC therefore presents a particular kind of representational challenge: that of avoiding stereotypes of violence, despair, and government corruption while at the same time attending to the complexities and nuances of individuals’ stories.

Whatever the challenges may be, the DRC has nevertheless proven to be a particularly attractive subject to documentary filmmakers over the last decade, with quite a number of (for the most part, internationally produced) films having been released. This is in some sense an encouraging development because of the potential for films that encourage a more nuanced understanding of the Congo, its current situation, and the historical causes of it. But it might also reasonably make one pause, as such documentaries risk becoming further examples of what one interviewee in When Elephants Fight calls “showing images of Congo on the TV that show nothing”—a statement that reminds us of the risks of normalizing images of violence and naturalizing spurious narratives of inevitable decline. It is therefore necessary to be particularly attentive to the ways in which directors deploy the documentary form and the kind of representations of the DRC that they produce. The three documentaries reviewed here exhibit different directorial philosophies in their respective attempts to document various aspects of the Congo. In utilizing features such as voiceover, intertitles, and fly-on-the-wall style filming, each of the films is distinctive for the nature of the gaze that it invites upon its subjects.

When Elephants Fight (2015) exposes the connections between the exploitation of the DRC’s rich mineral reserves by foreign companies and the suffering of the country’s people. The film is associated with Stand With Congo, “a global campaign organizing actions and amplifying human stories from the heart of the Congolese peace movement” (http://standwithcongo.org), and must therefore be understood not only as an attempt to document the ways in which the country’s mineral resources are the key to its current problems, but also as an explicit attempt at raising consciousness about the complicity of European and North American businesses in prolonging violence in the country. The film’s title comes from a Congolese proverb “When elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers,” the text of which is the first thing that the viewer sees. With foreboding music playing in the background, this white-on-black intertitle transitions to an interview with a Congolese man who states in English: “I say it again. Congo is very rich. We have a lot of minerals, but it has never profited the population. It has caused so many damage, so many sufferings to the Congolese people. We don’t need it. If some people are interested in our minerals, they can come. But the question is, to come to take the minerals, must they shed blood?” This powerful opening speech, delivered directly to camera yet clearly unscripted and spontaneous, poses the central paradox that When Elephants Fight explores: how a country that is so rich in highly valuable metals and minerals can continue to be so poor.

The key to this paradox is revealed methodically, with the thread of the narrative maintained either by the voiceover (narrated by the actor and director Robin Wright), by further white-on-black intertitles, or by talking-head experts. These experts include a former U.S. congressman, a U.S. diplomat, Congolese activists, and journalists. The director has also chosen to make use of archival footage, interviews, and undercover filming carried out expressly for this film. At one point animation is used to explain a complex financial arrangement. Stage by stage the film describes the various actors—individuals, politicians, and armed groups—that have been involved in siphoning off mineral wealth, and it locates these processes in relation to broader African and global political developments. There is a clear attempt throughout to appeal to viewers as consumers, something that is achieved by repeatedly emphasizing the role that Congolese metals and minerals play in the consumer electronics industry. There is also considerable attention given to the potential for consumer-based movements to force governments and companies to ensure that their products are “conflict free.”

The film is particularly effective in demonstrating the transnational connections between commercial capitalism and local armed groups. It therefore deserves praise for offering an alternative to what Joe Trapido, in a recent article on the Congo (“Africa’s Leaky Giant,” New Left Review 92, 2015), identified as “a marked shift in African studies, away from explanations that favour ‘dependency’ and towards those that emphasize ‘agency.’ Africa’s problems are, so this story goes, made at home—foreigners are merely used by regional actors as part of indigenous political projects” (7). This documentary is a useful counter to “the rejection of theories that identify Western Capitalism or imperialism as part of the explanation for Congo’s plight” (Trapido 7).

But while the film is likely to be successful in conveying the nature of the problem to audiences that may not be familiar with Congolese politics or with the workings of globalization, it suffers somewhat from an excess of framing material and expert opinion. In making use of a narrator, frequent intertitles, and numerous talking heads to tell the story, it feels somewhat crowded by competing authoritative voices. This becomes particularly problematic at the many moments when interviews with “ordinary” Congolese—apparently filmed expressly for this documentary—are shown. For the most part, the people filmed in the clips—whether they are miners, mineral smugglers, or simply people in the street—are not identified, nor are their names shown on screen as is the case for the talking-head experts. This format creates a hierarchy between the testimony of “ordinary” Congolese and the experts, something that is surely not the intention of the filmmakers. From an aesthetic point of view, the film often feels like a mixture of documentary styles—human interest documentary in parts, closely narrated exposé in others. While such a fusion certainly has the potential to provide the range of perspectives that the director clearly intends, the overbearing narrative framing has the effect of rendering somewhat trivial what is clearly footage with considerable documentary value.

Given that the film is an attempt to draw attention to the connections between resource extraction and violence, it is perhaps to be expected that it contains graphic images of the aftermath of killings. However, instances of this footage—apparently archival footage that has been acquired from elsewhere—are almost never incorporated into the narrative proper. Rather, images of dead civilians are used as an illustration of the kinds of atrocities committed, with music or voiceover continuing over them. Not only does this have unfortunate commonalities with the worst examples of the mainstream media’s deployment of such materials, it also risks normalizing such scenes within the context of discussions of the DRC. A more robust engagement with depictions of violence—perhaps naming the specific towns or villages shown, or explaining the origin of the footage—would have been desirable here. As things stand, the director’s attempt to appeal to the viewer’s emotions risks reproducing stereotypes around violence in the DRC.

In stark contrast to When Elephants Fight, Kristof Bilsen’s Elephant’s Dream (2014) features no narration or framing material other than on-screen names of locations, a short notice about the film’s financing, and an opening epigraph, a quotation from Chinua Achebe: “Until lions have their own historians, the story of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” If the implication of this choice of Achebe’s words is that the story of the Congo has generally been told according to the interests of external actors, Bilsen’s film can be seen as an attempt to go some way toward correcting this imbalance. It comprises three interwoven narrative strands, each of which follows one or more of the employees of the country’s tertiary sector. Henriette is a clerk at the Central Post Office, an imposing colonial-era building in the busy center of Kinshasa. With apparently nothing to do (shots of the interior of the building show it to be almost completely empty of customers), she sits behind the glass screen of her kiosk staring into space or singing to herself. The viewer is privy to her conversations with her colleagues who discuss the delayed and partial payment of their wages, a recurring theme throughout the documentary. As the film progresses, we see Henriette and her colleagues participate in re-training, part of the post office’s re-launch as a provider of up-to-date services, such as international money transfers, a change that is billed as a “renaissance.” “Now,” says Henriette, “I start getting responsibilities.”

The second narrative strand is filmed at a train station in Bas-Congo (since renamed “Kongo Central”), a region close to Kinshasa. Simon is the commander of the station: “I guard this station. Yet, the station has hardly any trains passing by. It became a place to rest, to study, rather. As funnily enough, there’s no service here. It’s quite bizarre, actually.” Apart from the one occasion when a train does pass through the station, we see Simon sitting and waiting, chastising a student who illegally crosses the rails, or conversing with his friend and colleague, Nzai. The latter is attempting to negotiate the complex bureaucracy of the railway service in order to obtain his retirement on the grounds of poor eyesight.

The third strand follows a lieutenant at Kinshasa’s fire station. The lieutenant tells us that although the capital needs five or six stations, this is the only one that exists. Even this building was almost destroyed by a fire several years previously and is now little more than a shell. The firefighters’ job, he says, is made even more difficult by the fact that new roads, constructed by Chinese contractors, do not have fire hydrants and they must return to the station to get water. The lieutenant shows himself aware of the political reasoning behind this situation: “It is,” he says, “a public service that will never make money.” In one particularly striking scene the firefighters respond to a fire in the city. As smoke billows from the affected building, they struggle to make their hose spray water. The large crowd that has gathered is unimpressed at their efforts, with one of them shouting, “The firemen let their own HQ catch fire, you can tell!”

The film provides insight into the strategies of resilience that emerge when inconsistency (or near-total dysfunction) is common for state services and infrastructures. Bilsen frequently gives his subjects the opportunity to express their opinions on life and prospects for the future. The film as a whole avoids any sort of sensationalism; although the dilapidation of the national infrastructure is a central theme, it is not posed as a “problem” by the film itself through any sort of narrative framing. The consequence is that the subjects themselves are put center-stage—this is a film about them, rather than about state failure. Furthermore, the subjects’ monologues are not delivered directly to the camera, but rather become the voiceover to footage of the speakers going about their business or, more often than not, simply waiting. This acts to lend authority to the voices within the film itself—in stark contrast to the secondary role played by “ordinary” people in When Elephants Fight. All of these artistic choices allow Bilsen to articulate an alternative to narratives of “state failure” that often overtake discussions of the DRC.

Whereas When Elephants Fight and Elephant’s Dream are international productions, Congo in Four Acts (2010)—the final film under review here—is the work of Congolese filmmakers, albeit in collaboration with the South African production company Suka! Productions. It comprises four short films from three directors, each focusing on a different aspect of life in the DRC. “Ladies in Waiting” (directed by Dieudo Hamadi and Divita Wa Lusala) sheds light on the bureaucratic challenges faced by a maternity hospital. Early in the film, the occupants of one ward are told that they will need to give up their beds to make room for new patients. We see long-suffering staff attempting to extract payment from patients who, as the wives of either absent or unpaid public servants, have no available funds. In several cases they are asked to hand over an item of value as “collateral” before they can leave the hospital, and the office in which most of these negotiations take place contains a stereo system and a television left behind by other patients.

“Symphony Kinshasa,” directed by the recently deceased Kiripi Katembo Siku, begins with sped-up footage of Kinshasa’s urban landscape, a clear attempt to convey the hustle and bustle of the city. Over more footage of Kinshasa—this time at normal speed—a voice, speaking in French, notes the high population density in the capital, which “creates a real problem for the environment.” The film goes on to focus upon several other problems in Kinshasa, including exposed electrical cables on the ground, the lack of trash removal and its consequences for malaria rates, and the flooding of some areas of the city. This footage has considerable documentary value, especially for scholars interested in African urban environments and the lack of adequate urban infrastructure.

The third film, “Zero Tolerance” (directed by Dieudo Hamadi), follows a government official tasked with investigating instances of sexual violence in what appears to be a rural community. Two male youths are accused of the assault and rape of an older woman. While they initially protest their innocence, they later admit to the crime and beg forgiveness. Asked by the government official what should be done with them, the victim replies that she would simply like the money stolen from her to be repaid. The second incident captured on film relates to a woman who has been raped (an assault that has injured her badly) and accused of being a witch.

The fourth film, “After the Mine” (directed by Kiripi Katembo Siku), was made in Kipushi, a city, the opening titles tell us, that is “located between an artificial desert and a mine.” The film introduces an initiative aimed at providing work for women who would otherwise lack a source of income in this city which was previously a major center for the mining industry. The women now have the opportunity to farm fields in order to make some money. Ngoyi wa Ngoyi, the Provincial Deputy of Kipushi, initiated this project (even buying the required land himself) because, in his words, “the government has failed its task. We do it to protect the population.” However, one of the women notes that “the money we earn isn’t enough to feed our children or send them to school.” She and her grandchild must therefore earn an extra paltry income from splitting rocks at the quarry and selling the gravel to dealers in minerals.

All four parts are unobtrusively filmed, with only “Symphony Kinshasa” and “After the Mine” making use of interviews with their subjects. There is no narration, although “Zero Tolerance” and “After the Mine” make sparing use of intertitles to put the scenes depicted in context. While the film has some commonalities with Elephant’s Dream—both use a fly-on-the-wall style—the effect is somewhat different. The recorded scenes (particularly in “Ladies in Waiting” and “Zero Tolerance”) are significantly more personal and fraught than those in the Belgian production. Indeed, the viewer witnesses people in severe mental and physical distress. The audio and video quality is lower than that of most contemporary standards—probably due to the use of small cameras and the cost or unavailability of other equipment at the time of filming. But paradoxically this characteristic of the film, while in no way detracting from its appeal, probably had the advantage of making the mechanics of filmmaking less obtrusive for those being filmed.

Considered as a group, the four films in Congo in Four Acts provide a rare kind of insight into the human aspect of well-known Congolese social issues. The three directors handle extremely delicate subject matter without judgment, and the lack of narration and sparse intertitles mean that the viewer is required to decode the dynamics of difficult situations. At the beginning of “Zero Tolerance,” for example, the viewer is not privy to any of the events that occurred before the uniformed government official enters the building where the two accused boys are being held. It is up to the viewer to reconstruct what has happened from the boys’, and later the victim’s, testimony. This kind of viewership is very different from the kind that is demanded by When Elephants Fight—where the path of the narrative is closely choreographed—and, to a lesser extent, Elephant’s Dream. Congo in Four Acts shows the possibilities of home-grown Congolese documentary for raising consciousness around social and political issues in the country. The film would therefore be a particularly useful teaching aid for graduate seminars where questions of structural violence, gender, and agency are under discussion.