Berlin, Sundance, Toronto, Nelson Makengo has proven his talent at the most prestigious festivals. The author of “Tongo Saa” is preparing to shine on the screens of Ouagadougou where his film is in competition in the feature documentary section. While in Dakar to participate in the Dakar Series, the Congolese director answered questions from Le Quotidien. “Tongo Saa” (96 mins, 2024) is your first feature-length documentary. But you first started with a short film before moving on to a feature. Why this choice?
Initially, it was a short film, video installation project. But then I realized there was a lot of energy. Meeting people at night, there was a lot to say, beyond what I imagined. Afterwards, I finally said to myself, why not broaden the thinking. Why not really look at things over time to see what could come from this experience, while knowing exactly where we want to go, but also allowing the opportunity to see situations evolve, to see people grow over time? inside a film. I hadn’t done a film lab before. But I think it’s a blessing. It helps maintain a certain freshness. Because before, I already made short films. I more or less know my technical and artistic limits. But grace is going to a Lab knowing more or less what you want to say. This helps protect the work, because there is a lot of influence in the laboratories. If you don’t have the tools, it can easily ruin the project.
And in “Tongo Saa”, there is this question of electricity which is always complicated in your country, there are floods. But on the side, we see people who are so religious, who pray to God every day. Are people aware of everything that is happening around them?
That’s all, in fact, the question of the film which talks about light. The film also talks about the boundaries between what is physical and metaphysical in a context like Kinshasa, in a context like the Congo. And how can we talk about the absence of light in such a religious environment. Because when we talk about religion, directly, it brings us back to the idea of light. And how can we talk about the absence of light in such a context? This is one of the major questions of the film.
And did you find any answers?
The answers, I think, are human experience. The experience we go through trying to dig, search and meet people. We ultimately discover ourselves and we discover what motivates us to make this or that choice. I discovered that you have to be patient. For example, in Congo, for us, it was the first time that we witnessed a transfer of power at the head of state, an election, a change of President and everything. So, for a country that is 60 years old, it puts you in a kind of waiting, speculating, utopia, dream. And the more time passes, the more it brings us back to our own reality, and we learn to be patient. We learn to let time pass. There is no miracle, ultimately. Before having this awareness that cinema costs a lot of money and financing for it to exist, I was already making commissioned films, to find money. And these are the funds which more or less helped me to partly finance my short films. I think that at the same time, it’s difficult, at the same time, it allows you to secure a certain clarity, in fact, in the way you see things at the start of a career. But afterwards, it solidifies us in complex collaborations, complex co-productions, and it allows us to be equipped, to already know what we want to say, what we want to tell through a story, through a story, a project.
You are in Dakar as part of the Dakar Séries Festival. And in the panel you just participated in, you said that the trap is to keep learning. What should we understand by this?
In fact, I really speak from experience. When I started to learn cinema, to do research on cinema in general, but also on the cinema that I wanted to make, there was this trap of continuing to learn. Because every time we learned, we discovered other things to learn. As a result, it ensures that we stay in training. And at some point we have to decide when to stop because our way of learning is to learn by doing, by taking action, by practicing, by making films.
And you started with the visual arts. But how do you become a filmmaker in a country where there is no cinema?
I was very aware of that from the start. Because I told myself that since there is already no school to learn, there is not necessarily any reason to have funds to support something that did not exist. Suddenly, there was this awareness that inhabited me and which allowed me to start learning methodically, without spending too much time. I don’t know how it came about. But at one point, I felt the need to stop learning, to stop learning the language of cinema, but also to learn the ecosystem all around, whether it be African cinema or world cinema. . For a moment, I said to myself that it was better to learn through films, through stories that we wanted to tell. And that’s good because it allows you to make mistakes, but mistakes that make you grow from a practical point of view.
And in “Urban Theater”, a short film you made in 2017, you use small figurines. Was it a problem of means or was it just something you wanted to do?
I think that at the beginning, it was just a desire to tell a story and tell a story with anything and everything. Everything that could make sense to say something, to tell a story. But also, problem of means. Tell a story with the simplest means possible, but which is necessary to be told, to be shown. Also, compared to this first experience with “Urban Theater”, it is also the idea that the city is difficult to film. People are camera shy. Compared to everything that happened, with everything we know about the Congo, people are reluctant to be on camera. And that, in fact, is the trap, the double challenge of making cinema in this context. At the same time, you have to think about the devices of the film, but also think about the story. And I think that it is this confrontation that allows us to be concise in the thinking we do to address a problematic subject.
What pushes you to make films?
I have an idea, I want to make a film, I do it. It depends on its requirements, its complexity, but initially, I do it. Even if you make blockbusters, that’s not going to change, actually. It is also a way of thinking like a sculptor, like a painter, like a photographer, like a poet, like a writer. You take your pen, what do you do? I am a photographer, visual artist. I think it’s complementary with the cinema that I’ve done today because between the two, it allows you to find new forms of narration, new forms of understanding situations, subjects, stories. And that opens up other possibilities for proposals.
So, what are your plans?
I’m writing new projects. I did research on the Nyiragongo volcano in Eastern Congo and Lake Kivu because I think that these are spaces that allow us to deepen our understanding of Eastern Congo, which suffers a lot of atrocities, threats.
And precisely, how does the filmmaker that you are approach all of this? This insecurity, these attacks?
I think the most important thing is people’s experiences. Often, with cinema, you can say things better than with information that is already well structured and everything. And cinema at the same time is a documentary approach, meeting people, listening to people, giving them a voice to learn, already, to predict what it can offer us from a cinematographic point of view . All these realities, this history, these geopolitical and geological contexts too, what can this give rise to as a form of narrative, as a form of history?
