Dogs of war

OneWorld UK

By Daniel Nelson

Oh, no not another film about Africa seen through white eyes. I thought I would dislike Shooting Dogs. I was wrong. Its superb, and it has sparked important debate on several fronts.

It follows three other films about of the Rwandan genocide: 100 Days, Sometimes in April and Hotel Rwanda. The last of that trio was shot in South Africa and was the most Hollywoodised, but even that had the courage to put an African couple at the heart of the story.

Shooting Dogs co-producer and co-writer David Belton who covered the 1994 massacres for Newsnight - defends using the prism of a white Catholic priest (played by John Hurt) to tell the story: "I didnt feel qualified to write a story from a specifically Rwandan perspective The white mans role in Rwanda is so integral to what happened there."

Sadly, as Hurt has said, "You cant make a film about Africa if its entirely African and show it in Europe because it would suffer exactly the same demise as did the actual happening."

Despite reservations over this approach, it works because even though the two main characters are the priest and a white schoolteacher, the events are what the film is about, not as is the case with so many Western films about Africa - simply a backdrop.

And the film does explicitly question the West's role in the genocide.

Perhaps because it packs such a powerful punch, it has provoked criticism.

The most serious attack has come from Linda Melvern, an updated version of whose book, Conspiracy to Murder. The Rwandan Genocide, will be published in April. Her recent article in The Observer was headlined: History? This film is fiction, and she pointed to several historical errors.

Last week director Michael Caton-Jones shrugged them off. Its a film, not an article or a documentary, he told the audience at a special screening at the National Film Theatre. The politics of Rwanda and Burundi is extremely complicated. I was trying to show what it felt like to be there.

Their exchange goes to the heart of the controversy over the ethics of popular films based on real events. Historians and academics argue: A good film is so convincing that people think they are seeing what really happened; inaccuracy, invention or dramatisation is dishonest and dangerous. Filmmakers argue: a 90-minute film doesnt pretend to tell the whole or the literal truth, but it can give a truthful impression, in the hope that viewers will be interested enough to find out more for themselves.

A related but not identical criticism is about emphasis rather than accuracy. The priest featured in the film is not a real person, as suggested by some of the surrounding publicity, but a composite figure. One commentator has voiced dislike for the the film's focus on the priest's heroism, basing his reservations not on the issue of historical accuracy but on the grounds that in fact many priests failed to make a stand against the genocide, and in some cases encouraged it.

I share that view, which is given additional force by the fact that the real-life figure on whom the film priest is partly based did not stay: he left with the Belgian peace-keepers.

The filmmakers have also been accused of endangering the health of Rwandans by their vivid recreation of horrifying events. The accusation stems largely from what Caton-Jones calls one small incident during production in which a group of people was disturbed by the apparent reality of what was being filmed.

Wilson Gabo, a co-ordinator for Survivors' Fund for Rwanda, told Reuters: "It has caused trauma to many of the survivors who took part in the shooting, including school-going children." He said many student survivors with roles in the movie were still scarred by the experience, with some refusing to go back to class.

Mary Kayitesi Blewitt, director of the UK-based Rwandan charity Survivors' Fund, was quoted by The Observer as saying that When the shoot was over, we had to step up trauma counselling. It took some people six months to overcome the anxiety, fear and paranoia.

On the other hand, a number of people who narrowly escaped death in the attempted genocide and who lost many family members took part in the film, as actors or crew, and are given special citations in the credits at the end.

Like many of the 1,500 Rwandans who watched a special screening at a stadium in Kigali this week, President Paul Kagame took the view that, however, harrowing, the film would help the world remember events that the "international community" did nothing to stop:

"Even without the film", he was reported as saying in The Times, "people are traumatised when they remember what happened, but that is the price of keeping the memory. The most painful part of our history is part of us, and we need to remember it, accept it and deal with it."

· Shooting Dogs
· Anger at BBC genocide film
· Yes, we did cover horror of Rwanda