Locally-made Zanzibari film premieres at ZIFF

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Locally-made Zanzibari film premieres at ZIFF --

Tue, 28 Jul 2015 10:17

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SCREEN AFRICA EXCLUSIVE: On the penultimate day of the Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF), locally born and based filmmaker Shams Bhanji premiered a feature-length film, designed as a pilot for a proposed television series. The film, titled Nadya, was the only film shown at ZIFF that was 100 percent a product of the island of Zanzibar.

Starring local, non-professional acting talent, led by Maria Dominic in the title role, Nadya tells the story of a young Zanzibari woman avidly pursuing her studies in order to secure her future. Her parents are not well off and her tuition fees are in arrears. Her initial manner of tackling the problem is to take up Arabian dancing for men s entertainment in night clubs (as salacious as it gets in conservative Zanzibar society) in order to earn some extra cash. However her parents soon offer her what appears to them to be the ideal solution: a wealthy businessman in the community would like to arrange for Nadya to marry his son. The family s financial concerns would in turn be provided for and he promises that Nadya will be allowed to continue her studies. Nadya, convinced that she will have to give up her dreams and submit to a life of servitude, conspires with her teacher to arrange her escape but things do not go as planned.

Bhanji, a Zanzibar-born filmmaker who was raised in Kenya and trained in Denmark and the UK, says that the original idea for the story was suggested by Dominic herself. While the specifics of the story may be fictional, they are based on real-life experiences related to Bhanji by his lead actress and which many young Zanzibari women are dealing with every day. In traditional Zanzibari society, he says, this is a hot and sensitive subject and his film would likely be frowned upon by many of his fellow islanders.

Nadya is one of several films screened at ZIFF 2015 that addressed themes relating to women s rights in east Africa and beyond. Others included Strength of a Woman from Kenya, which won the ZIFF award for Best East African Film Talent, and the three-minute Mauritian offering Red Card, which is not so much a narrative film as a very blunt public service announcement designed to bring to light the proliferation of domestic abuse in that nation.

Bhanji, whose previous film, Zamora, received a number of accolades at several festivals, including FESPACO in 2013, intends for Nadya to become a television series, thus making it more likely to be seen by a mass audience in mainland Tanzania and beyond, and to draw attention to the stories and storytellers of Zanzibar. Much of the remainder of the series is already plotted out and is set to take the lead character on a lengthy journey away from her home territory, developing into an extended coming-of-age story.

The film was screened at ZanCinema, a charming 52-seat movie theatre (one of very few venues in Zanzibar specifically designed for the purpose of exhibiting films), somewhat removed from the hub of festival venues in central Stone Town. Bhanji is planning another screening in Dar es Salaam very soon, as his search to find a television commission for the story continues.

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