Deluge: Revolution or Disillusion

E l s a b e t W . G I O r Q IS am neither a film critic nor am I a filmmaker. I am however a 9 captivated admirer of Salem Mekuria's documentary Deluge I •I read an article by Matthew DeBord entitled Foresight and Aftermath in Fall/Winter issue of M a (No. 9) and I was persuaded to write on the one Ethiopian movie that had left a priceless impression on my being. While I enjoyed reading Matthew DeBord's arti100 -Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art cle on Deluge, I felt obligated to respond from a different perspective and as a person who experienced the dilemmas of the period . A friend of mine who authored a book1 on the Red Terror opened his writing with a Quote from Gerard Prunier's The Rwanda Crisis, History of a Genocide which says that "Man is largely a social construct, and to deny a man the social meaning of his death is to kill him twice, first in the flesh, then in the spirit." Indeed, such was the melancholic demise of many during the public madness of Ethiopia's "Red Terror". For some of us who escaped the physical slaughter of the time, the history of events had been a part of our upbringing, a cruel initiation to our adolescence that had lost vitality and our amputated spirit that has yet to be healed. I was part of this generation that was numbed by an insane turmoil of a nation. Deluge which means catastrophe or flood appropriately fits the period of the time. The movie starts with the legend of the Queen of Sheba, the castles of Gonder, the strong history of a 3,000-year-old Christian kingdom and the ferocious and fierce waterfall of the Blue Nile, traveling through its stretch of roads and joining its tributaries. For a brief moment, the camera takes us to the majesty and grandeur of a land that had shaped our hopes and our dreams. For a brief moment, the camera transports us to all the ideals we stood for, to the hope that we died for and to the fallen friends and loved ones that we grieved for. As the daughter of a clergyman, Salem remembers the grace of a Christian upbringing and the breathtaking landscape of her country. For her as for many of us, Ethiopia was just as eternal as the rivers that surrounded her. Little did we imagine the sour and cataclysmic epoch that would follow and haunt our lives. The documentary is about two individuals , the filmmaker's younger brother and her very best friend. It is a tale of two people whose memory had just begun and whose life was full of beginnings and no ends. It is Salem Mekuria, Still from Deluge. a tale of two people who looked Very much like each other, who shared a dream and a common history of suffering and glory. It is a tale of two y o u n g people who felt strong and felt that they would always be so, who tumbled together because they did not know the contours, those twists and turns, those valleys and hills of the human kingdom. It is a tale of an ideology called Marxism that seemed like a suitable and simple substitute for the Queer compassion for the very poor. A l l told, it is a tale of a conviction that captured the dreams and the mythical innocence of a nation's youth and a nation at large. Ethiopia was a monarchy then led by the infamous Emperor himself, Haile Selassie I. Over time the monarchy had become fragile. The Emperor had abandoned the country's acute problems. Famine had ravaged the country, unemployment was high and despair had crippled all hope, litter had prevailed among the population and the familiar anger of students was lit with the predominant fuse of indigence. Land reform was the primary aphorism and a classless society became the ultimate objective. It is with this common ideal that Solomon (the film maker's brother) and Negest (the filmmaker 's best friend) enlisted in the deadly struggle to "liberty", "eouality" and...