Nelson Makengo

Birth : 1990-01-01, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo

History

Nelson Makengo (1990, Kinshasa, DR Congo) is a photographer, filmmaker and producer. He is a graduate from The Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa and La Fémis in Paris. He has directed six short films which have been screened at the Sao Paulo International Film Festival, Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival (France) and de Saint-Louis Documentary Film Festival (Senegal), among others. He was one of the 10 Congolese artists selected to participate in the 2017 Atelier Picha (Lubumbashi). In 2018, Makengo presented his film E’ville at the Lubumbashi Biennal and was artist-in-residence at Wiels Contemporary art centre (Belgium). Makengo’s film Up at Night had its UK Premiere at BFMAF 2020.

Movies

Rising Up at Night
Director
Kinshasa and its inhabitants are in darkness. They wait and struggle to get access to light. Between hope, disappointment and religious faith, Tongo Saa is a subtle and fragmented portrait of a population that, despite the challenges, is sublimated by the beauty of Kinshasa's nights.
Rumba Rules, New Genealogies
Camera Operator
Rumba Rules, New Genealogies offers an enjoyable, rough-edged glimpse into the music scene of Kinshasa, with impromptu shots drawing the viewer into jam sessions on plastic chairs, and the quest for perfection at the studio.
Up at Night
Director of Photography
Although Nuit debout opens with a woman’s account deploring the shortage of electricity in Kinshasa, the direct nature of the invective is put at a distance by the way it is treated: the image that should accompany the voice is first absent, then tripled. The film seems to be the result of a mischievous prism that sometimes multiplies the image, sometimes associates it with others. By combining colourful shots bordering on the abstract with ambient sounds, the filmmaker proposes a personal variation on a documentary tradition: that of the urban symphony. The visual stream is as precarious as the electric current and it happens that darkness invites itself onto the screen without warning. The images echo each other or are sometimes attuned to create veritable triptychs.
Up at Night
Screenplay
Although Nuit debout opens with a woman’s account deploring the shortage of electricity in Kinshasa, the direct nature of the invective is put at a distance by the way it is treated: the image that should accompany the voice is first absent, then tripled. The film seems to be the result of a mischievous prism that sometimes multiplies the image, sometimes associates it with others. By combining colourful shots bordering on the abstract with ambient sounds, the filmmaker proposes a personal variation on a documentary tradition: that of the urban symphony. The visual stream is as precarious as the electric current and it happens that darkness invites itself onto the screen without warning. The images echo each other or are sometimes attuned to create veritable triptychs.
Up at Night
Director
Although Nuit debout opens with a woman’s account deploring the shortage of electricity in Kinshasa, the direct nature of the invective is put at a distance by the way it is treated: the image that should accompany the voice is first absent, then tripled. The film seems to be the result of a mischievous prism that sometimes multiplies the image, sometimes associates it with others. By combining colourful shots bordering on the abstract with ambient sounds, the filmmaker proposes a personal variation on a documentary tradition: that of the urban symphony. The visual stream is as precarious as the electric current and it happens that darkness invites itself onto the screen without warning. The images echo each other or are sometimes attuned to create veritable triptychs.
E'ville
Director
E’ville (short for Elisabethville, name given to the city of Lubumbashi before 1960). A film in layers, which superimposes musical atmospheres, sound archives, images and ghosts. A juxtaposition of images of an empty place with the weight of history, through an intimate story in off: an open letter from Lumumba to his wife. The desolation of the place unfolds under the impulse of the voices and the bodies which cross it. Combining family intimacy with history, the film immerses us in the collective memory of the country.