Best Musical: Directors Renaud Barret, Florent de La Tullaye for Benda Bilili!

Best Documentary: Director: Asif Kapadia for Senna.

Best Actor: Michael Fassbender for Shame.

Best Actress: Tilda Swinton for We Need to Talk About Kevin & Olivia Colman for Tyrannosaur.

Best Movie & Best Director: Lynne Ramsay for We Need to Talk About Kevin.

I haven’t seen Benda Bilili! so can’t comment on that one. As for the others, it is hard to believe they aren’t nominated for Oscars. Check back tomorrow for the first ever Groovers Movie Awards.

• 3/5
• Watch it, at a party along Buena Vista Social Club. Personally, I still look forward to The Harder They Come.
• Enjoy the music and the cool-as-hell polio-bikes.
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1625857/
• Seen 26/9 2011 @ home, on a laptop computer.

This is really cool. A bunch of disabled men (and a healthy young guy) plays music on more or less ragged guitars and some homemade instruments. They ride around on tricycles because polio took their legs. The music is really good, though you’d like more full songs – it’s a little fragmented. The photo is also enjoyable with dynamic images of nighttime Kinshasa. The band is the center among the disabled and disadvantaged, and different things happen. We watch as the shelter burns down and we travel on a crowded train during Joseph Kabila’s election campaign. These sequences add to the image, but I miss a coherent story or theme. Maybe it’s my bias that creates irrelevant expectations, but at least I would like to see what happened after the tour with the concert in Norway.

Asså det är riktigt coolt. Ett gäng handikappade män (och en frisk kille) lirar musik på mer eller mindre trasiga gitarrer och hemmagjorda instrument. Man åker omkring på trehjulingar eftersom polion tagit benen. Musiken är riktigt bra, fast man skulle vilja höra mer hela låtar - det blir lite fragmentariskt. Fotot är också ganska njutbart med dynamiska bilder från nätterna i Kinshasa. Bandet står i centrum bland handikappade och förfördelade och det händer olika saker. Vi är med när härbärget brinner och vi åker överfullt tåg under Joseph Kabilas valkampanj. De sekvenserna kompletterar bilden, men det framgår ändå ingen sammanhängande berättelse eller röd tråd. Kanske är det mina fördomar som skapar irrelevanta förväntningar, men jag skulle iallafall vilja veta vad som hände efter turnén och konserten i Oslo.

Still from Benda Bilili!

On the streets of an African city, Kinshasa to be exact, some homeless people form a band.

In time, they get good and then go on to make a record and eventually tour Europe.  It sounds an unlikely scenario even for a feature, but it’s a true story and it is happening right now.  This documentary, first filmed when the band was unknown or known only locally, recounts the tale.  We see their travails and difficulties: living hand to mouth, dealing with disability. 

One time a fire burns down a refuge and many band members lose everything.  That they persist, cope and endure almost goes without saying.

Truly, the band make a majestic racket, what with their songs about polio, sleeping on cardboard and all that.  Now the best thing, of course, is to see them live; but you’ll want to seek out this potent, uplifting documentary as well.

A couple of their songs on YouTube to whet your appetite:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaTZ5gAzkCY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzCUcO_d1qI&NR=1

The Pitch:

The Review: We think of the documentarian as our eyes and ears into a different world, giving us the chance to witness events first hand or to gain an insight into an as yet untold story. But what if that story wouldn’t have been told without that insight? Benda Bilili! is somehow more than a documentary, it’s an active witness of the evolution over half a decade of a group of street musicians from the streets of Kinshasa in the Congo into a band whose music, and musicians, have travelled the world. But it’s a journey guided by unseen hands, as documentary makers Renaud Barret and Florent de la Tullaye track the efforts to get the band heard by a wider audience.

When we first meet Staff Benda Bilili, it’s 2005 and Barret and de la Tullaye have been documenting the lives street musicians in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in the process discovered the fantastic sound made by the Staff, but now begins the long struggle to get their music heard. The group, led by ‘Papa’ Ricky and Coco, use their music to express the frustration at life in the slums of one of Africa’s poorer countries and their hopes and dreams of a better life, or at least a simpler one. Despite the fact that all are confined to tricycles after suffering, as many have in that area, from the effects of polio, this rarely rates high enough up the list of life’s hardships to get a mention. The music has struck a chord within the film-makers, but it’s a long journey to get them recorded and there are deeper hardships to come before they get their big chance.

That unseen guiding hand also has another influence: as talent scouts. In covering the rest of the city in a search for other musicians, the one who immediately stands out is Roger, a young boy who has developed his own instrument from little more than a tin can, a stick and a piece of string. The group can also see his potential, and take him under their wing – the passage of time being most reflected in his evolution from boy to young man and the group’s soloist during the documentary. His story alone would be both inspiring and uplifting, but given that it’s just a small piece of a much larger story, which feels almost too good to be true, means there’s plenty of narrative to fill the running time over the five years that passes.

During that time we get a mixture of insight into the family lives of the various members, and to some extent the pressure that the band is under to succeed  and give back the benefit to their families, and there’s a feelgood vibe to proceedings. Most of the footage is low quality, grainy handheld footage, but that of course is driven by the situation; what does come over loud and clear is the music, which from the first recording sessions in Kinshasa zoo to their budding concert performances captures the infectious blend of reggae and blues that brings their music alive and has rightly won them acclaim the world over. It’s a tremendous story, efficiently told with just enough powerful moments to keep their story on the right side of interesting the whole time. As Staff Benda Bilili would say, very very strong.

Why see it at the cinema: If we’re being completely honest, it’s not for the picture, which is of consistently low quality. But if your cinema has a good sound system, then a good time should be had by all.

The Score: 8/10