History, trauma and remembering in Kivu Ruhorahoza’s Grey Matter (2011)

Abstract

© 2016 The Author(s). In 1994, the genocide in Rwanda claimed at least 800,000 lives in just 100 days. More than twenty years on, the memory and trauma of the events still permeate the Rwandan society. This article explores how some of these different manifestations of trauma (individual and collective, actual and inherited, real and imagined, that of survivors and perpetrators), and especially their relationship to the genocide as a historical event, shape the internationally recognised Rwandan feature film, Kivu Ruhorahoza’s Grey Matter (2011). Drawing on the scholarship on trauma, the article examines Grey Matter’s uniqueness within feature films on the topic and its ambition to tackle the impossibility of memory and objectivity vis-à-vis varied experiences of the genocide. It traces the connection between trauma and Grey Matter’s structure, which refuses to offer events a firm chronological placement, both within and beyond the narrative.