Remaining tickets for the Thursday night Jubilee will go on sale when the box office opens at noon on Thurs., 3/3. (Line numbers will be distributed at 9 am.) Tickets are $25 and include the masquerade ball (featuring signature cocktails by Columbia’s best bartenders) and then a screening of the jaw-dropping “Benda Bilili.” We encourage cocktail attire and a mask.
“Benda Bilili” is about an awe–inspiring group of homeless, paraplegic men who’ve emerged from Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, playing an explosive mix from soukous to reggae, old-school R&B, Afro-Latin grooves and funk. While their physical impairments might have been the reason they got together in the first place, the music transcends their back-story, demonstrating that disability exists in the mind not the body. Appropriately enough for a masquerade, the group’s Lingala name Benda Bilili means “look beyond appearances” or literally “look further.” Film-only tickets are not available. For those who can’t make it on Thursday, the film will be playing two other times at the fest.