Finding Fela (2014)

Together with the Amsterdam-based music platform Steppin' Into Tomorrow we are going to watch the story of Fela Kuti. Directed by Academy Award winner Alex Gibney, “Finding Fela” tells the story of how Kuti created a new musical movement, Afrobeat, which he used to express his revolutionary political opinions against the dictatorial Nigerian government of the 1970s and 1980s. The price he had to pay was high, because between the 1970s and his AIDS-related death in 1997, he was arrested 200 times, his home was set on fire and his mother was murdered. But he never gave up. As in Alex Gibney’s earlier documentaries about the cyclist Lance Armstrong, Wikileaks chief Julian Assange and scandal-ridden governor Eliot Spitzer, the director doesn’t shy away from his subject’s less positive traits, taking the time to focus on Kuti’s regressive ideas on women’s emancipation and the stubborn denial of his fatal disease. This is a portrayal of the man and a celebration of the myth.

Melkweg often hosts different types of programmes at the same time, such as concerts, club nights and films. Please note that there may occasionally be some noise pollution from other programmes during the screening.