Although widely considered a pioneering artist
in the field of stop-motion and animation in Central Africa, J. M. Kibushi
Ndajte Wooto is an understated man. Always measured and philosophical in his
approaches to his art, his films are a reflection of this. That stop-motion is
his medium of choice is not incidental. This process requires absolute control
of every minutiae and such conscious and considered treatment of the image
frame. Moreover Jean Michel is not only an artist in his own right, but
critically a cultural proponent for the DRC, a curator and historian for
animation from the region.
Kibushi was born in 1957 in Lubefu in the
Kasai Oriental region, and grew up in Tshumbe in the DRC. His background is in
drama and cinematography with an education from Kinshasa's National Institute
of the Arts (INA) between 1985 and 1989. In 1991, he made his first stop-motion
film of a Tetela tale, Le Crapaud Chez
Ses Beaux-Parents. He was isolated in his endeavours as the only animation
artist in the DRC at the time. Nevertheless, he continued making work inspired
by local narrative whether fictional or real, as in the documentary animation Septembre
Noir (1992). Perhaps it was this solitary experience that
drove him to become an agent of change, promoting the development of animation
amongst local artists in the region. As Studio Malembe Maa he continues to
undertake socially motivated work with more of an educational and developmental
agenda, through creative workshops with young people using local storytelling
and theatre and the Caravan Sankuru (a mobile-cinema that travelled the
Sankuru region that would otherwise have no access to film or animation).
You can read the article here: and more importantly you can purchase a DVD of his collected films on DER.
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