Eric Kabera

Eric Kabera BIO

Eric Kabera is a Rwandan filmmaker, founder/President of Rwanda Cinema Center and the Kwetu film Institute.

Kabera, a Rwandan, was born in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Even though he was still living in the DRC when the Rwandan Genocide started in April 1994, he tells of his family members who lived in Rwanda at the time, 32 of them dying in the violence. This inspired him to make a 2001 feature film about the genocide titled 100 Days and a 2004 documentary titled Keepers of Memory in which he interviewed both victims and perpetrators of the atrocities. 100 Days, which Kabera made in collaboration with the British filmmaker Nick Hughes, was the first film shot in Rwanda after the genocide and it was also the first feature film which encouraged many other films to be made on the same subject, including the famous movie Hotel Rwanda. 100 Days employed no professional actors, rather, the filmmakers used actual Tutsi and Hutu survivors to act out the script, and was shot on location in Kibuye at the actual scenes where acts of genocide occurred.

Kabera initially set up the Rwanda Cinema Center as an organization that would train new filmmakers but, since 2005, the center has been better known for organizing the annual Rwanda Film Festival. The Rwanda Film Festival, nicknamed "Hillywood" due to Rwanda's being known as "Land of a Thousand Hills", is a travelling festival. Due to Kabera's desire to show the films to as large of an audience as possible, the annual festival is held not only in the capital of Kigali but the films, especially ones made by Rwandan filmmakers, are also shown on large inflatable screens in rural areas throughout the country. More recently, Kabera has set up the first film and television school the Kwetu film Institute which has been supported institutionally by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the German government through training provided by The Deutche Welle television station.Kabera has stated that the festival will make a move away from not only focusing on the issue of the genocide; rather "other social issues" of modern Rwanda will be explored. With this he pledged to make comedies; and the beginning of that commitment resulted into the making of an acclaimed feature film Africa United, an adventure story of 3 kids who travel 3.000 miles away from Rwanda to South Africa for the 2010 World Cup. Eric Kabera is also the recipient of the 2012 African Visionary Award from the