LA BELLE AT THE MOVIES / U.S. Premiere

Kinshasa, “Kin la Belle” is a city of 10 million people without a single cinema theatre. “La Belle At the Movies” documents the disappearance of Kinshasa’s entire cinema industry over the past decade through interviews with filmmakers, cinema owners and government officials and powerful poetic imagery of a city and a population, nostalgic for the magic and the social tissue cinema once provided. The story of a city, the apartheid era, neo-colonialism under Mobutu and the censorship of certain preachers unfold through this narration of the fate of Kinshasa’s cinemas. At the same time, “La Belle” celebrates the Kinshasa cowboys who found their identity in the Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s and the vibrant commitment of many Kinshasans today to the memory and future of the cinema industry. Carefully documented, lyric in its imagery, “La Belle at the Movies” is a testimony of a moment in time where the film industry feels orphaned but lives in hope for a brighter future.