Encounters with conflict and peace
Sources and credits
These are the writers who have opened up Rwanda and helped me understand what I was seeing through the viewfinder. They examine bewildering cruelty with gentleness and compassion. They will make you want to listen to the voices of humanity - all voices.

All the films and most of the images on the website are by Dave Fullerton, unless noted otherwise. If I have missed any credits, please get in touch.

Books
Seasons of Blood - Fergal Keane
Season of blood
A Rwandan journey

by FERGAL KEANE
Fergal Keane is one of the BBC's most distinguished correspondents. Early in this book he says "this is not a subject for fine words" but nevertheless it is a beautifully written account of the trip he made through Rwanda in the last weeks of the genocide.

Winner of the 1995 Orwell Prize
A time for machetes-Jean Hatzfeld
A time for machetes
The Rwandan genocide. The killers speak.

by JEAN HATZFELD
Remarkable journalism about the everyday details of life for ordinary people in an extraordinary situation.

Philip Gourevitch said, "Hatzfeld's harrowing documentation of the voices of Rwandan killers reminds us once again how perfectly human it can be to be perfectly inhumane."
The shadow of the sun - RYSZARD KAPUSCINSKI
The shadow of the sun
My African life

by RYSZARD KAPUSCINSKI
Wonderful writing on Africa. The chapter on Rwanda from this Polish writer was my first - and most poetic - history lesson on this captivating country.
A people betrayed-Linda Melvern
A people betrayed
The role of the west in Rwanda's genocide

by LINDA MELVERN
Classic investigative journalism. Lt Gen Romeo Dallaire said, "The best overall account of the background to the genocide and the failure to prevent it... she discovered so much that we did not know, and her book remains one of the best sources available."
The gacaca courts - Phil Clark
The gacaca courts
Post-genocide justice and reconciliation in Rwanda.
Justice without lawyers

by Phil Clark
Explores the way Rwandans interpret gacaca. An in-depth study, based on more than seven years of field research and 500 interviews. Phil is a young Australian and convener of Oxford Transitional Justice Research.

Published by Cambridge University Press
Into the quick of life - Jean Hatzfeld
Into the quick of life
The Rwandan genocide. The survivors speak.

by JEAN HATZFELD
Based mostly on interviews with the survivors, this book "humanises the witness to the genocide in a way that almost no book or film has yet done..." (Dave Eggers)
A thousand hills - Stephen Kinzer
A thousand hills
Rwanda's rebirth and the man who dreamed it

by STEPHEN KINZER
"A country, Rwanda, rising from the ashes of genocide phoenix-like, and its President Paul Kagame, who is making it happen. This is no hagiography, for he is depicted warts and all... a very good read." Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
The strategy of antelopes - Jean Hatzfeld
The strategy of antelopes
Rwanda after the genocide

by JEAN HATZFELD
A follow-up to his earlier books. He returns to Rwanda to talk to the people he had come to know: "Hutu killers and the Tutsi survivors who are now asked to tolerate them as neighbours."

Winner of the Prix Medicis in France.
Rwanda - a Bradt guide
Rwanda
A Bradt guide

by PHILIP BRIGGS and JANICE BOOTH
The essential travel guide for a trip to Rwanda.
Recommended films
Shooting Dogs film
Shooting Dogs

directed by MICHAEL CATON-JONES
Filmed in Rwanda, this is a re-telling of the events at L'Ecole Technique Officielle during the genocide. The main characters are British but because it's filmed on location, for me it captures a real sense of the place.
Shake hands with the Devil by Romeo Dallaire
Shake hands with the devil
The journey of Romeo Dallaire

A film by PETER RAYMONT
Follows Dallaire's journey back to Rwanda ten years after the genocide. Lt Gen Romeo Dallaire was tasked by the United Nations Security Council with maintaining peace in Rwanda, but despite increasingly desperate requests for help, was left unsupported by his superiors in New York. He remains haunted by the experience.
A grim but well made documentary.
Sometimes in April film - Rwanda
Sometimes in April

writer/director Raoul Peck
HBO Films
Based on true events, this film tells the story of two brothers divided along political lines by the conflict.

Selected for the 2005 Berlin Film Festival