Virunga

Virunga National Park is Africa's first - created by King Albert of Belgium in 1925 to protect habitat of the mountain gorilla.This documentary about Virunga has two main thrusts - meeting the park's staff who give the phrase "passionate about my job" new meaning, and examining the threats posed to the park. These threats include the oil exploration concessions given to British Company SOCO by the Congolese Government, poachers, and the various rebel factions still fighting in the Congo.

The park staff are all armed - they need to protect themselves from wild animals, but also themselves and the animals from poachers and rebel fighters. They are literally prepared to give their lives for the animals and the preservation of the park, and many rangers have been killed in recent years. During the course of the film we see rebel fighters and tanks arrive in the park and fighting taking place, which feels a bit like seeing armed conflict at a kindergarten. It was heartening to see that once the fighting was over, the first thing the staff did was head up to the hills to check on the gorillas. Men who had been shooting at people the day before were now sitting in the grass and smiling.

Andre with one of his charges

The softer side of the job is shown by the carers for the four captive orphaned gorillas that live in a special house in the park. Mountain gorillas are particularly furry and photogenic, and their chief minder, Andre, is equally charming.Taking the gorillas outside to play in the trees looks like tremendous fun.

It's hard to know whether you'll be more impressed or depressed by this documentary. Virunga is staggeringly beautiful and diverse but there are so many things going wrong in the Congo. I was somewhat cheered to see on  that SOCO appears to have agreed not to drill for oil in Virunga unless UNESCO agrees.

So get acquainted with deepest Africa by watching the film, or at least the trailer, or perhaps this piece from Al Jazeera's Earthrise. I hope that one day going to Virunga might be less hazardous than it is now.

Viva Riva!

If you don't know any French then well before the end of Congolese thriller Viva Riva!, you'll figure out that "Où est Riva?" means "Where is Riva?"

Recently returned to petrol starved Kinshasa from Angola with a fist-full of US dollars and a truck load of petrol, Riva is a popular guy. He wants to go out and party while waiting for the petrol price to peak, so he can make a killing. But his big spending, womanising behaviour is attracting attention. Soon his dapper ex-boss, César, arrives from Angola asking "Où est Riva?" and local crime boss Azor is asking the same question. César is cool, calm and ruthless in his mission to recover his truck load of petrol whereas Azor is a more standard issue African "big man", who is angry and jealous that his seductive girlfriend Nora has been flirting with Riva.

The film divides its time almost equally between Riva, Nora and "The Commandant" a female army officer blackmailed by César to hunt down Riva. The two women are the most interesting characters. The sultry Nora is the shiniest thing in Kinshasa, but is little more than Azor's play thing, but that doesn't stop her going after what she wants with little more than her beauty. The Commandant is a more tricky character, it seems that her main weapons are not her military position or gun but her contacts around the city. She helps under the duress of blackmail which means no-one trusts her.

The finale is suitably climatic and more pessimistic than Hollywood would make it. The message delivered by Viva Riva! is a bleak one, that money is poison, and it contaminates everyone it touches.

Sub-Saharan African cities usually turn up in films as colourful backdrops for short sequences, so it is refreshing to see Kinshasa and its population being the centre of the action rather than the backdrop. Even the outsiders (César and his two henchmen) are only slightly foreign. Kinshasa is portrayed as a chaotic, dirty city, corrupted at all levels where the electricity is intermittent (but the cell phone system works OK). While the actors and the problem of petrol shortage are African, the style of film making is European.

As you might expect some American critics are concerned about the nudity and sex. More seriously some critics consider Viva Riva! to be an exploitation film, but I wonder if they comment equally on the exploitation that is common place in Hollywood films and TV.

Ian's rating 5/5