Word: pecked
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Peck decided to make the film, which opens at New York's Film Forum on June 27, after a Swiss producer suggested a movie about a white doctor who goes to Africa to find himself. "That's been done a hundred times," says Peck. "I wanted to make a film about an African in Africa...
...intellectuals in Africa and the African diaspora seek their own explanations for the failures not only of post-independence Congo, but also of post-colonial Africa more widely, there is renewed interest in the story of Patrice Lumumba. Haitian-born director Raoul Peck's powerful new film, "Lumumba," uses the story of the Congo's first and last democratically-elected prime minister to graphically and explosively explore Western complicity in the Congo's slide into chaos following its independence...
...coup and eventually executed, Lumumba had managed to alienate the outgoing Belgians, the United States and the U.N. Worse - from a Western point of view - he deigned to flirt with the Soviets at the height of the Cold War. The accumulation of propaganda against Lumumba was so damning that Peck initially found it hard to focus on the man. "I couldn't feel any sympathy for Lumumba," he says. "It took me time to see the man behind the image...
...After interviewing hundreds of witnesses, a different image emerged - Lumumba as a self-educated nationalist reacting to a harsh colonial regime. "He was self-taught and he had a crash-course in world politics," says Peck. "He didn't really have time to develop an ideology or a message." The fact that Lumumba could be effective at all was something of a miracle. By the time of independence, the Belgians had allowed only 17 Congolese to obtain a university education. Larry Devlin, a CIA agent in the Congo at the time, agrees with Michela Wrong that Lumumba tried...
...CRUISE clung to his publicist, and Calista Flockhart, Lucy Liu and Lara Flynn Boyle formed the world's skinniest posse near the dance floor. The room froze briefly when SEAN (PUFFY) COMBS tracked down JENNIFER LOPEZ and new boyfriend CHRIS JUDD, but Puffy merely gave J.Lo a gentle peck on the cheek. Soon COURTNEY LOVE was throwing a high-pitched fit because her manager couldn't get into the party; DENISE RICH was expertly dodging a photo op with MONICA LEWINSKY; and old guys Hugh Hefner, Donald Trump and LARRY KING meandered with their decades-younger lady escorts. Yes, that...