Benda Bilili! follows an unlikely group of
musicians in Kinshasa, capital of the war-torn Democratic Republic of
Congo. The band, Staff Benda Bilili—in English, “look beyond”—is a group
of street musicians composed of four paraplegics and three able-bodied
men. The core of the group is four singer/guitarists polio, who use
customized tricycles to get around: Ricky, the eldest and a co-founding
member of the band; Coco, the band’s composer and co-founding member
with Ricky; Junana, the member most disabled by polio, yet the official
choreographer; and Coude, a bass player and soprano singer. Joining them
is a young and entirely acoustic rhythm section, led by Roger, a
teenage prodigy on the satongé, a one-string guitar he designed and
built himself out of a tin can.
French film
directors Florent de la Tullaye and Renaud Barret encountered the
extraordinary group in 2004 as they played their music on homemade
instruments in the area around the Kinshasa Zoo and began documenting
the band’s struggles to survive—through music—in the volatile city. The
result is an exuberant film that follows the band’s journey from the
streets to the world’s stages, culminating in the 2009 release of their
acclaimed album Tres Tres Fort.
Benda Bilili!
was written and directed by Renaud Barret and Florent de la Tullaye.
The producers are Yves Chanvillard and Nadim Cheikhrouha of
Screenrunner, and Florent de la Tullaye and Renaud Barret of La Belle
Kinoise. Co-producers are O.L. Production and Studio 37. The editor is
Jean-Christophe Hym. The film premiered at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival
Directors Fortnight and was nominated for Best Documentary at the 2011
César Awards, the national film award of France.
Directors' Statement
Benda Bilili! is
a film about outcasts who defy a system that defines them as marginal.
It is not a musical film, but the band’s songs complement the narrative.
Every problem encountered by the Staff Benda Bilili gives rise to a
song they then try out on the streets.
The film
is set in emblematic sites. The leader of the band, Ricky, sets up shop
in the Sonas traffic roundabout in the center of Kinshasa, a genuine
“court of miracles” in the heart of the financial district. This
sidewalk corner is a true crossroads of broken destinies, a parliament
of the starved and dying; it becomes the band’s headquarters.
The
band also frequents the Kinshasa zoo, a wasteland garden littered with
cages haunted by emaciated animals. It is a world apart, populated by
shégués (street kids), military dealers, hoods, and thugs of all kinds.
In this deafening and asphyxiating city, the zoo is the only place of
relative calm—a decaying sanctuary that evokes a lost paradise for the
Congolese. The Staff Benda Bilili rehearses and even recorded parts of
their album there.
Through the wandering band’s
“migration,” we see the city streets as sites of transition, an ever
moving and dangerous physical environment, full of spikes and pitfalls.
Visually, it is the ultimate expression of the political corruption of
the city and its effect on the urban landscape that surrounds
them—vertiginous holes in the middle of the roadways, lakes of rancid
water, crevices that create monstrous traffic jams. The calm
determination of our heroes and the hypnotic clicking of their tricycles
contrasted with the din of the thundering city. As the success of the
orchestra grows, the street people get worked up, unite, and regain
hope—inspired to act on behalf of all the disenfranchised.
From
the seedy sidewalks of Kinshasa to the hype clubs of Copenhagen, the
limping odyssey of the Benda Bilili overthrows clichés regarding
handicaps and misery. It dares us to question our own limits and our
ability to bounce back.
—Renaud Barret and Florent de la Tullaye
Vaughan Bell
Mashable
II Magazine
