Last week was the Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF)! This was its 13th year of bringing films and music from around the world to Stone Town where residents can enjoy for free and I could enjoy for about $7 a night. I haven’t been to many, but I love film festivals in general! The process of finding the schedule and catalogue, then reading about every movie (plot, time of day, duration, etc.) and selecting my favorites, then making my own schedule to follow or revise depending on what the festival holds! As always, I wanted to see a ton of the films; though, due to work, I was restricted to evening showings. Almost every night last week held a memorable experience at the Old Fort, the old stone structure beside Forodhani Gardens where they projected the evening films [see picture below]. Here’s what I watched at ZIFF:
Memory Books: A German director, Christa Graf (who I got to briefly talk with after the film), documented the experiences of three Ugandan families as they use their Memory Books. A Memory Book is an empty book that a mother with AIDS uses to account the history and memories of her life and her family. She does this with her children; filling the pages with pictures, stories, and notes that her children will forever have to look through when she is gone. The documentary featured a mother who travels Uganda and teaches other women with AIDS about the Memory Book for their own children, a mother who had been given a Memory Book and was currently filling it out every night with her daughter by candlelight, and two children who only had a Memory Book left to remember their mother by. Needless to say, this film was incredibly powerful!
No Woman No Cry: We were delighted to have the First Lady of Zanzibar introduce this film! I was glad that she brought emphasis to this film, since it was a documentary about maternal mortality around the world. Christy Turlington Burns, an American, narrates this film about her experience with pregnancy and childbirth, juxtaposed with her accounts of three women in different countries who find their experience of the same process to be much more challenging. Burns travels to mainland Tanzania where a woman nearly dies pre-labor due to a lack of proper medical facilities; and to the slums of Bangladesh where women birth their children at home (with completely unqualified help) because of the cultural pressures that look shamefully upon using a hospital. Burns also travels to Guatemala where abortion is strictly forbidden and there is a great need for maternal medical care since so many women have unsafe abortions. Throughout the film, Burns brings up various issues that affect the health of women throughout the world, and she presents astonishing related statistics. Did you know that every minute of the day a woman dies from complications in pregnancy or childbirth? Did you further know that more than 90% of those deaths are preventable?
Ana’s Playground: This was a short film set in an indistinct (European, perhaps?) city at war. A few children are playing ball in a back street, and the ball ends up over a large fence…in the zone of a sniper. One girl decides to retrieve the ball, and soon finds herself dodging bullets and eventually discovering the human side of the sniper. What happens right after is the most shocking (I won’t give it away just in case you can find this 20 minute film on youtube)!! The film reveals how war and violence affect the humanity of a child; quite an engaging yet disquieting story unfolds!
Imani: Not one of my favorites, Imani is a drama that follows three people in different parts of Uganda: a maid who must find a way (at work) to help her neighbor get to the hospital, a former child soldier who moves back in with his family after living in a recovery home, and a hip hop dancer who is coordinating a community fundraiser/performance. The stories progressed well and the way the plots alternated between each other hinted at an eventual 3-way connection…but all of a sudden the credits began to roll! This was right as the maid was forced to sleep with the gardener in order to get enough money to save her neighbor, the mother of the child soldier found a very violent drawing among her son’s possessions, and the dancer rejoined a gang in order to continue with his fundraiser. Obviously the endings are quite negative and disturbing, so it left me puzzled at the actual point of the film…perhaps: “Nothing comes easily…there is always a price”?
Tunahaki: This documentary had me quite flustered! It was obvious that the filming began after Scott Fifer (some Hollywood director blah blah blah who saw Hotel Rwanda and decided to go help people in Africa) had returned from his month in Moshi, Tanzania volunteering at Tunahaki orphanage. While there, seeing the unique way that the director (David) trains many of the children in acrobatics in order to raise money, Scott promises them that he will bring them to America so they can be trained by Cirque de Soleil. Scott tells the camera, in one of his many day-to-day accounts of the stresses of emailing and phoning to coordinate Tunahaki’s US visit, that the community of Moshi found out about Scott’s promise and now thinks that Tunahaki is rich…and because of this, the landlord of the property doubled Tunahaki’s rent and they were forced to find a new place to stay. So Scott decides to build them an entirely new (and huge) orphanage center. The rest of the film documents Scott’s planning (he creates a foundation so he can raise money for the orphanage) and hosting of Tunahaki for an 18-day stay in California. Their stay was filled with performances (at a school, in a backyard fundraiser, at a Lakers’ game, on a local news station), several tourist locations (amusement park, the beach, and even Las Vegas [a place David expressed in advance he did not want the children to go]), and a few Cirque de Soleil training sessions. The film then flashes forward two years (to 2007) when Scott returns to the orphanage to find that the center construction had not begun. Then at the end of the film, mere white-on-black text explains that Scott and David no longer communicate due to disagreements over money…and Scott now runs another non-profit: gocampaign.org….while the new center has STILL not been built! The entire documentary had “white privilege” and “American band-aid” written all over it! Scott did a lot of work so the children could visit America, but many times it was clear that he had his own interests in mind. We have to be careful what aid we give: it must be culturally, socially, and economically sound with those who are receiving it.
Pumzi: The coolest film of them all! A short drama about Africa “35 years after World War III: The Water War,” the plot follows a woman who is determined to find salvation from the worldwide drought! She lives with everyone else in a contained station that is 100% sustainable and even converts urine into drinkable H2O! The problem is that when this woman investigates a gift that contains unique soil that could foster life (by the way, no one talks…everyone types), she is denied the ability to continue investigation and is chastised for her curiosity. She eventually escapes the commune and ventures through the desert until she nearly collapses; and here is where she plants an important plant with the unique soil and using the last water she has (even the sweat wiped and rung from her body!). She lays down to shade the plant, and the film ends as we see a bird’s-eye view of the tree flourishing stage-by-stage. It was a great expression of the human spirit and redemption. Even cooler: the creator/director spoke after the showing!
Motherland: At first, I didn’t think I was going to like this documentary about Africa. The entire film is narrated by a large host of African-rooted individuals, and they began talking about how Africa was the beginning of all people and had the first of everything history. It came off very excluding and hyper-proud, even expressing that if you are from Africa there is no way you can deny your first identity as African. I forget all the specifics, but Yu-Jin and I were shaking our heads at some of the things that were said. We chose to wait it out, and what followed were several other parts: the diversity and vibrancy of Africa, African slavery, colonialism in Africa, US and European commercialism/capitalism in Africa, and the importance of an African Union. What was at first a stressful, shouting expression of African identity; soon became a motivating and unifying call to action for the bettering of Africa, moving past imperialism and white supremacy. I’ve never studied Pan-Africanism, but it seems like an important next step!
Have Your Heard From Johannesburg?: I only saw the second half of this documentary, but I think I got the gist of it. The film was a look back on the South African and New Zealand rugby teams and tours during Apartheid, and the countries’ two sides on the issue. The anti-Apartheid activists were so diligent and full of energy! During one game, they all swarmed a metal fence that guarded the rugby field, and they ripped it down and gathered in the middle of the field in protest of the racist team! It was such an empowering image, seeing such a daunting structure being toppled by a large group of people. It was very interesting to here pro-Apartheid comments during those years; they sounded a lot like people today who disapprove of equality-seeking progressives within the US.
Looking down on the Old Fort amphitheater
