L’Animation Indépendante Africaine: Volume 2 is a collection of short films from young animators from Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Rwanda. These new talents created their first animated films after attending Afriqu’Anim’Action, a series of film industry workshops initiated by Studio Malembe Maa, which took place in Kinshasa and Bujumbura from 2009 to 2013.

In 1988 Michel Kibushi Ndjate Wooto from the DRC founded the Studio Malembe Maa (meaning “slowly but surely” in Lingala) after attending a workshop in Kinshasa by Atelier Graphaoui on animated films hosted by the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles. In 2004 he initiated La Caravane de Cinéma Mobile pour le Sankuru, a mobile caravan that brings African cinema to local communities. From 2007 to 2012 he organized training workshops through the support of ACPCultures+ and financed by the European Commission, which ultimately culminated in the project Afriqu’Anim’Action. The objective of the project is to assist young professionals in the creation of animated films, with the expectation that graduates of Studio Malembe Maa will then transmit their expertise to other Africans (see www.acpculturesplus.eu/?q=fr/content/afriquanimaction-studio-malembe-maa-rd-congo).

While the films that compose L’Animation Indépendante Africaine: Volume 2 are drawn from the imagination of their creators, they call equally for the emotional investment of the viewer. Much of this emotion is evoked by the soundtracks that drive the images and provide an ambient atmosphere to each animation. What further links these shorts is the strong desire of the animators to present their own perspectives on a multifaceted Africa using a medium that appeals to viewers of all ages. The sophistication of the drawings and digital works varies, but these shorts nonetheless keep the viewer engaged with glimpses of the lived realities, aspirations, dreams, and collective memory of this new generation of artists. Because each animation is just a few minutes long, they could easily be included in many college and university courses, including language courses, not only for their approachable content but also, in some cases, for the dose of humor they provide.

The first two shorts feature animations from Burundi. The opening tale, La Belle et l’oiseau (5 min. 7s.) by Pacifique Nzitonda, tells the charming story of a beautiful and shy girl, Kanyange, who turns down all suitors until a bird tricks her into crossing a stream to meet the prince on the other bank. A more dramatic piece, Autodestruction (4 min. 10s.) by Fabrice Iranzi, highlights issues of deforestation and climate change and the two alternatives available to humans: to change our habits or to become extinct. The next seven shorts are by Congolese animators. Impokotoyi, by Hénok Bombolo Wathou (9 min.), is a delightful morality tale about the stubbornness of children based on the African proverb “la taille des oreilles ne dépasse jamais celle de la tête” (“ears are never bigger than the head”). Despite multiple warnings, a young girl named Ndoko (wearing a purple hat evoking Little Red Riding Hood’s headgear) chooses a short and clean trail over the long and dusty one to cross the forest with her crying baby brother and reach their mother. How the child is saved from the cannibal monster and other story elements are reminiscent of the classic fairy tale. In Carlos Kalonji’s La Vie continue (6 min. 55s.) three police officers deal with traffic infractions in the buzzing streets of a city neighborhood. A humorous tone is set from the beginning, when we see a policeman studying the rules of the highway code just minutes before beginning his shift. In the darker but moving Rêve de Chien (4 min. 25s.), Jourdain Kielukusu Izu di Do tells, with Slam music, the miserable life of a dog contemplating a better future on television and the drifting away of his utopian dreams as his owner devours a hearty meal. Pitshou Botulu, in Sous la ceinture (3 min. 17s.), cleverly takes the unexpected perspective of a shoeshine boy who makes connections between his clients’ clothing and footwear and their gaits. The film is a synesthesia of colors, forms, and sounds in which walking and dressing evoke characterizations of the passersby. Armel Pululu Mbala’s C’est Urgent! (5 min. 3s.) explores in a colorful way what an ambulance must go through to reach its destination and implicitly calls for better roads and more civility among drivers.

Two of the films are subtitled in Dutch and in English. Set in the colonial era, Armel Pululu’s Ame noire, Les mémoires de la colonisation (10 min. 50s.) presents an administrator who, after returning to his home country with an unduly acquired flywhisk and other artifacts, is chased by the spirit of a village shaman taking revenge. The dramatic use of masks incidentally places this short in the lineage of Sembène Ousmane’s La Noire de . . . . (1966). Mr et Mme Kokoriko (6 min. 47s.) by the Rwandan animator Maurice Nkundimana is a witty story of a family of chickens that advocates for women’s emancipation and a fairer share of the tasks in the family circle. The polished digital drawings of this film were chosen to illustrate the DVD and the cover of the collection.

The DVD also contains a twenty-minute documentary titled Roger Jamar et les Palabres de Mboloko by the producer Jean-Michel Kibushi about Jamar, the “pioneer of the Congolese animated film,” who in 1952 created, along with Father Alexandre Van den Heuvel in Leopoldville, the Bambi-inspired fawn Mboloko whose adventures, based on African fables and filmed in stop motion, captivated Congolese viewers. Viewers interested in finding more on Kibushi’s animated work can find five of his shorts in L’animation Independante Africaine: Volume 1 (2015), which includes Le Crapeau chez ses beaux-parents (1991), considered the first Congolese animated film, and Prince Loseno (2004), winner of the COE prize at Fespaco 2005.

The DVD also contains a bonus film, Kukinga (8 min. 34s.), by the Congolese animators Frank Mukunday and Trésor Tshibangu Tshamala, which portrays the phenomenal struggle of a mother to save her newborn child from predators. Produced in 2015 by Crayon de Cuivre Studio and L’Institut Français de Lubumbashi, Kukinga makes skillful use of mixed media (stones, metal, wood, rope, chalk, candles) to express emotions and give life to the four elements (fire, water, air, and earth). It also includes a slide show presenting the various stages of the creative and animation process of the artists and technicians of Afriqu’Anim’Action in Studio Malembe Maa.

In an interview with Simon Mbaki Mazakala, Kibushi said “We must let our audience consume images that show our identity rather than always let them see images from elsewhere talking about other cultures” (“Il faut permettre au public de consommer ces images, de voir notre identité plutôt que toujours voir des images venant d’ailleurs qui parlent d’autres cultures que la nôtre”) (http://www.africine.org/?menu=art&no=11852). The Congolese animator and producer certainly rose to the challenge through this production, which permits young African artists from central Africa to project their own sociocultural realities and to let loose their imaginations.