Jean-Michel Kibuski

Rooted in the oral tale recounted by the Tetela in Sankuru, Democratic Republic of Congo, this story explains how it came to be that the Fox ate the Chicken, the Chicken ate the Termite, the Termite ate the Stick and the Stick ate the Toad, when the Toad arrives at his in-laws’ home and is served a meal with a single spoon, sparking off a terrible row!

With the help of the sun, the sage of sages and swallow, Ms. Toad manages to find the famous white orange that gives life to her husband and his comrades.

This film presents a devastating portrait of a society rife with corruption, as experienced by a young boy in Kinshasa trying to survive.

An animated documentary about children's drawings from the military pillaging that hit their community in September 1991. This short uses limited animated techniques interspersing the children's drawings with drawings from Kibushi himself.

A short documentary about Roger Jamar, the pioneer of African animated film, made by renowned Congolese animator Jean-Michel Kibushi who also oversaw the restoration of Jamar's original 16mm prints. The Palavers of Mboloko is a series of seven short 16mm color “animated cartoons for Africans” produced in the Belgian Congo by the priest Father Roger Jamar during the 1950s. They have been called the first ‘African’ films, despite being made by Europeans, because they incorporated elements of African folklore and music.

This short film utilizes intricate clay animation to tell of King Ngolo, who is without a male heir. Jealousies among his three wives and with his first love — now the court witch doctor — thwart birth of a successor. Finally blessed with a male heir, the king dies during the Prince's coronation; "Birth and death are twins in the destiny of man," concludes the narrator-griot.

1933, North-East Congo: The Belgian colonial authorities accuse a group of men of being Aniotos, men who kill like the leopard. There is no visual documentation of the hearings, and the Congolese animator Kibushi re-imagines the events through animations, re-enactments, and interviews, challenging Western depictions of the leopard men as a ‘Savage Other’ and the colonisers’ understanding of socio-political order and justice.