The Sunday News
Nkosilesisa Ncube, Sunday Life Reporter
INTERNATIONAL Images Film Festival for Women (IIFFW) on Thursday brought their first national outreach for this year to Bulawayo and they screened three African films by African women and for African women as part of their bid to empower women in and through film. All three films showed — Ninah’s Dowry, Aisha and Elelwani featured a strong female protagonist who has to undergo a series of trying and most traumatising events to eventually reach her happy resolution. Speaking after a screening held at Makokoba’s Stanley Hall, Women Filmmakers of Zimbabwe (WFOZ) Projects Assistant Angeline Madyara said they had screened those particular films because they effectively captured the struggles and triumphs of modern day women.
“We picked these three films because they all show women that are strong, who are seemingly disadvantaged but in the end they come out strong, overcoming the obstacles that they were formerly faced with. We wanted to show that cultural institutions are not there simply to oppress women but also to help and emancipate them,” she said.
In spite of the noble reasons behind screening these particular films and the powerful nature of the films, attendance to the screening was very low. Save for the facilitators and no more than four locals, Stanley Hall was empty for the event, a common trend with film screenings where people generally do not attend. When asked about they had chosen not to attend the screenings, Makokoba suburb residents listed a number of reasons but the most recurrent of them was that the movies were too sensitive.
“When you watch a movie, you want something that will make you laugh but every time we are called for these free movies, it ends up feeling like we are in class because of the serious conversations that we have after watching. We want something light for a change,” said one resident who chose not to be identified.
A teacher at a nearby primary school said she had wished to take her students to the screenings but when she pretested the films, she realised they were too much for her pupils. “I would have loved to take my pupils to the screening since it was done after school hours, just to give them a feel of the bioscopes we had in the eighties and nineties, but when I saw the list of films they were showing, I did not think it appropriate to show those to children. They are sensitive movies. The movies also portray men as these very vicious beings and my students are too young to be exposed to that much cynicism,” said the teacher.
The serious and graphic nature of the films has seen more and more people shying away from public and community screenings. However, Madyara explained that they showed these particular films in order to spread a certain message to society and also because the light-hearted films were hard to access.
“We show films that will get people talking and discussing serious issues that affect them. More than that however, we would like to show something less serious once in a while but most distributors of these feel good films are not forthcoming. They are hardly ever willing to give us the rights to showcase their films to our local communities but we do try every now and then to bring in something that people can enjoy,” she said.
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