Of the three legendary postwar Marxist revolutionaries ­ the others being south-east Asia's Ho Chi Minh, and south America's Ché Guevara ­ Patrice Lumumba is the least well-known. Born in 1925 and assassinated at the age of 36, Lumumba co-founded the Mouvement National Congolais (MNC), for which he was proclaimed national hero in Zaire (formerly Belgian Congo) in 1966.

Then along came Haitian director Raoul Peck with his documentary Lumumba ­ Death Of A Prophet (1991), which helped considerably to clarify details about the betrayal, arrest, torture and murder of the political activist and deposed prime minister of the new Democratic Republic of Congo. Some observant critics maintain that Peck's documentary ­ which was the recipient of the San Francisco Golden Gate Award and programmed by more than 40 festivals ­ influenced the making of Spike Lee's Malcolm X a year later.

Born 1953 in Port-au-Prince, Peck lived for a time in Zaire, worked as a journalist and photographer, studied economics at the Free University of Berlin, graduated from the Berlin Film Academy (1988), made a dozen shorts and features from his Velvet production base in France and Germany, and served until recently as the Minister of Culture of Haiti (1995-97). His L'Homme Sur Les Quais (The Man By The Shore, 1993), set in the Haiti of the Duvaliers, competed at Cannes; and his Corps Plongés (It's Not About Love, 1998), about a Haitian diplomat exiled in New York during the military coup, was invited to compete at Montreal.

"After 18 months of relentless political struggle as Minister of Culture for my country," states Peck, "I decided to return to Lumumba and set the record straight, 37 years after the fact, about a murder-cum-sacrifice. It's also a matter of transcending my own griefs, regrets, and still-burning anger."

For Lumumba he chose a multi-level chronological approach, rather than a linear narrative, covering three time-scales: the present 30th anniversary of independence, the 1961 Congo crisis and Lumumba's formative years.

We see a charismatic orator rise from menial jobs as postal employee and beer salesman, to become the leader of the Mouvement National Congolais and go on to win election as the prime minister of the new Congo. And we also meet the so-called allies ­ Tshombe, Mobutu, Kasavubu ­ who betrayed him and delivered him to the firing squad, and then tried to wipe out all traces of his memory among the people. It is, says Peck, "a Shakespearean drama".

Ron Holloway