Summary: 16 years after the Rwandan genocide, in which over one million civilians (mostly Tutsi) were slaughtered in 100 days, this paper will explore how screen media (film drama, documentary) has presented these events internationally and indigenously. Drawing from the insights of trauma theory (via La Capra, Kaplan, Walker), I will discuss Rwanda’s evolving screen culture and practice, alongside earlier attempts to mediate the ‘unrepresentable’ in other national/historical contexts of mass human suffering (Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Shoah). Mick Broderick is Associate Professor and Research Coordinator in the School of Media, Communication & Culture at Murdoch University, where he is Deputy Director of the National Academy of Screen & Sound (NASS). His major publications include editions of the reference work Nuclear Movies (1988, 1991) and, as editor, Hibakusha Cinema (1996, 1999). Recent co-edited collections with Antonio Traverso include Interrogating Trauma: Arts & Media Responses to Collective Suffering (Routledge, 2010) and Trauma, Media, Art: New Perspectives (Cambridge Scholars Press 2010). As writer, co-editor and co-producer, his short documentary Hope for the Future was simulcast on National TV while screening before 20,000+ genocide survivors at the Rwanda National Stadium during the 16th anniversary commemorations in April 2010.
