The UW Cinematheque concluded its annual Pan-African Film Festival on July 30 with Juju Factory,"" a Congolese/Belgian film originally released in 2007. The Cinematheque's summer schedule, while much too brief, provides us with the invaluable opportunity to catch international films we may never again be able to see. Yet ""Juju Factory,"" which isn't currently available on DVD or on the Internet, proved that it warranted screening for reasons beyond its relative obscurity.
""Juju Factory"" is the first feature-length work directed by Kinshasa-born filmmaker Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda, whose oeuvre had previously consisted of fictional shorts and documentaries. The subject matter of ""Juju Factory"" is neither too broad nor too specific; the film is at once an investigation of political dreams that became lived nightmares, a meditation on the relationship between economics and artistic creativity and a somewhat formulaic comedy about three interconnected marriages.
Ultimately, it's difficult to say whether this apparent identity crisis makes ""Juju Factory"" both enjoyable and thought-provoking or totally disorienting. Indeed, Bakupa-Kanyinda seems perfectly content exploring this heterogeneous sensibility: Early in the film our protagonist, a writer appropriately named Kongo Congo, describes the book he's working on as a ""mix of reality and imagination."" Kongo has been commissioned to write a short book profiling/advertising the Matonge district in Brussels, where he lives with his wife Béatrice and several generations of Congolese immigrants. Kongo resembles a character from Jean-Luc Godard's later films, an artist constantly mourning political possibilities that were never actualized. Images of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo following its liberation from Belgian rule (he was shot dead by a Belgian firing squad in 1961), are scattered throughout the film; these images are especially pronounced during the delirious montage sequences that represent the dreams and memories from which Kongo draws inspiration. Kongo is the classic ""artist as portrayed by an artist:"" His cowardly publisher, also a Congolese immigrant, tells Kongo that ""words and images should be neutral and beautiful,"" but Kongo wants to compose a work that more closely resembles a hybrid of Frantz Fanon and Arthur Rimbaud than it does a Michelin guide. This creative desire is fairly understandable if one recognizes that Kongo doesn't see himself as being an immigrant at all; he is an exile through and through. As Béatrice says at one point, ""Exile is no country. It's a land of ruins.""
However, the visual and dramatic style of ""Juju Factory"" is kind of underwhelming. Shots of characters' reflections in windows recur throughout the film, yet because of Bakupa-Kanyinda's use of cheap digital cameras, these images generally lack the clarity and precision of Hou Hsiao-hsien's effectively similar compositions, such as in last year's ""Flight of the Red Balloon."" Much of the film is shot close-up, generating an interesting but tiresome antithesis to the cultural alienation bubbling beneath the skin of this bipolar work. The combination of cheap cameras, natural light and slightly awkward acting lends ""Juju Factory"" an inherent rawness, vaguely reminiscent of John Cassavetes' own feature debut, 1959's ""Shadows."" The editing and the découpage are mostly functional rather than expressive, though the aforementioned montage sequences are poetic flourishes that again recall Godard's video work.
As unsubtle as its handling of themes like racism and cultural amnesia may be, and as flat as its acting often is, ""Juju Factory"" heads in genuinely heady directions when it plunges fearlessly into the cinematic deep end. One only wishes it were a bit more unapologetic about its own political and aesthetic boldness.
