Skip to content
RAI FILM
About
About RAI Film
Meet the team
Prices
Film Distribution
Watch on demand
Ethnographic Film Catalogue
Teaching resources
RAI Film Festival
About RAI Film Festival
Film Festival 2025
Film Festival 2025 Group passes
Film Festival prizes and awards
Film Conference 2025
Archive of past editions
Menu
About
About RAI Film
Meet the team
Prices
Film Distribution
Watch on demand
Ethnographic Film Catalogue
Teaching resources
RAI Film Festival
About RAI Film Festival
Film Festival 2025
Film Festival 2025 Group passes
Film Festival prizes and awards
Film Conference 2025
Archive of past editions
RAI FILM
Login
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
About
About RAI Film
Meet the team
Prices
Film Distribution
Watch on demand
Ethnographic Film Catalogue
Teaching resources
RAI Film Festival
About RAI Film Festival
Film Festival 2025
Film Festival 2025 Group passes
Film Festival prizes and awards
Film Conference 2025
Archive of past editions
Menu
About
About RAI Film
Meet the team
Prices
Film Distribution
Watch on demand
Ethnographic Film Catalogue
Teaching resources
RAI Film Festival
About RAI Film Festival
Film Festival 2025
Film Festival 2025 Group passes
Film Festival prizes and awards
Film Conference 2025
Archive of past editions
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
Films
found one film
Keywords
“Death”
x
Country of production
“United Kingdom”
x
Year of production
“2014”
x
Colour / Black and white
“Colour”
x
Region
Southern Africa
1
Country
Botswana
1
Keywords
Death
1
x
Religion / Belief / Faith
1
Directors
Werbner, Richard
1
Series
The Well-Being Quest in Botswana
1
Country of production
United Kingdom
1
x
Year of production
2014
1
x
Colour / Black and white
Film
Burying Hallelujah
2014
51
‘
Directed by
Richard Werbner
.
Hallelujah, a ‘bush mechanic’ turned archbishop, gets the funeral he deserves, one of the very biggest in Botswana’s railway town, Palapye. Many churches come together, their robes, splendid, their reverent hymns transcending their separate traditions, their members in their finest suits and dresses. It is a remarkably ecumenical occasion. The archbishop himself preaches, not from the grave but about it, in a DVD he prepared the year before his death, perhaps with some premonition, knowing danger in his own condition. Avowed aims – glory, beauty, honor – are richly fulfilled in the funeral. From the elaborate display of tender condolences with gorgeous floral wreaths to the costly feasting on the slaughtered cattle, no expense in spared. Yet solemn as much of the funeral is, it also ripples with raucous laughter moment when the ceremonious even sanctimonious surface of social life edges towards the scandalous. Most of the people present know much more about the archbishop than everyone wants said, as they seek to have him ‘Rest in Peace’. They keep their embarrassment under control, even when his wreaths and redemptive candles drop awkwardly from his coffin. ‘Rest in Peace’ is the peculiarly apt joke his cousins share among themselves, walking to the cemetery, for the former ‘bush mechanic’. "Sinners are black. Entering faithless, they leave with whiteness, with joy and forgiveness" so runs the hymn for Hallelujah. This film illuminates the move through tension and vulnerability in ritual performance, when the occasion focuses on a popular, lovable rascal. Some of his closest kin serve as the outspoken interpreters of his rise and fall as an urban villager, who grew up in the countryside, barely able to write his own name, and learned to manipulate others in the street-smart ways of the railway town.
Southern Africa
Religion / Belief / Faith
Death