Columbite Tantalite: a short film by Chiwetel Ejiofor – video | Stage | theguardian.com
▻http://www.theguardian.com/stage/video/2013/dec/11/columbite-tantalite-short-film-chiwetel-ejiofor-video
The latest in a series of short feature collaborations between the Young Vic and the Guardian, this short film is written and directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor. It’s a postcolonial parable about the west’s hunger for African mineral wealth, and about Congo’s struggle to come to terms with its past – a contemporary response to Aimé Césaire’s A Season in the Congo, which played at the Young Vic theatre earlier in 2013.
Earlier this year, I was on stage at London’s Young Vic playing Patrice Lumumba – a remarkable man who made a remarkable journey from being a beer salesman to the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s first prime minister. The play was called A Season in the Congo, and it focused on the years in which the country won its independence from Belgium. Lumumba was elected to office in June 1960; less than three months later, he was ousted in a coup. The following January, he was killed by firing squad. The plot was almost certainly organised with the backing of Belgium and the US.