Conflicts and Culture

The second edition of the Festival Arts Azimuts (FAAZ 2), will invite 15 plays during 15 days from 2nd to 17th October 2009 in Huye and Kigali Town. FAAZ 2 gathers 8 countries: from America (USA and Canada), Europe (France) and Africa (Uganda, Burundi, Senegal, Burkina Faso as well as Rwanda). The plays selected question our humanity with strong and powerful artistic tools. 9 music, dance and theatre plays approach topics such as genocide, rape, death penalty and 6 other are rather celebration of life, hope, faith, love, beauty…

This festival is an initiative that aims to making Rwandan people resilient and helps to heal wounds. It will also enable us to record stories for next generations and thus help to prevent conflict in the future.

It also plays an even more invigorating role in promoting networks and drawing collaborations regionally. Actually, by carrying out workshops and creations for a wide audience and diffusing them, the Festival Arts Azimuts sets the basis for putting into practice new and active initiatives in the Great Lakes sub-region.

It’s also an occasion to build other bridges between countries and continents and integrating Rwanda in international cultural networks. By transforming the workshops Arts Azimuts into the first international and contemporary festival in Huye, UCAD is expanding and strengthening its place into the region and to other regions of Africa through regular exchanges and presentations of different artistic productions.

UCAD is breaking through barriers and getting itself known through promotion even as far as Latin America (Mexico, Brazil). Countries that have undergone similar experiences of generalized violence share the same post-conflict situations regardless of the origin of it. Here cultural expression has a major role to play in holding up hope for the future.

The commitment and quality of people related to or involved with the centre has also enhanced the capacity of it to make itself known beyond the national confines.