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On Friday 4th June 2011, the Perenco library welcomed Belgian filmmaker Françoise Levie for the first screening in Africa of her film "Paul Panda Farnana, un Congolais qui derange (an inconvenient Congolese)". The screening was attended by an audience of some 500, and was followed by a lively debate.  

Paul Panda (1888-1930), Congo's leading intellectual of the day, hailed from the Territory of Muanda. He left Congo for Belgium to complete his secondary education and went on to qualify as an agronomist. During the 1910s, Panda returned to his homeland (to Boma, some 100 km from Muanda, to be precise) as a civil servant working for the Belgian Ministry of Colonies. Returning to Belgium after the Great War (1914-18), during which he fought with the Corps des Volontaires Congolais volunteer force in Romania, Paul Panda founded the Union Congolaise, one of its main objectives of which was to defend the rights of Congolese veterans of the First World War. It was during this period that he made his name through his writings in the press and developed close links with other emancipation movements, in particular the civil rights movement in the USA. Paul Panda died in 1930 in Muanda, where he saw out his career as an agronomist.

The film follows the unlikely progress of this young intellectual, steeped in two cultures, who campaigned for equal rights at a particularly sensitive period in the history of both the Congo and Belgium.

For Muanda, the screening coincided with the launch of a regular programme of films to be shown at the Perenco library. Following the success of Erick Bourriot's film "Muanda ekomi Ville (Muanda, a city in the making)" in November 2010, Perenco DRC has decided to organise an outdoor film screening to be held at least once a month in the library gardens.  

Contact : Nicolas de Blanpré + 33 1 53 57 66 00