The African Women in Cinema Blog commemorates United Nations World AIDS Day

As highlighted in past commemoration posts, African women in cinema often use the visual media as a tool for awareness building as it relates to matters that touch their societies and burning issues that effect Africa.

In this regard the initiative Scenarios from Africa had as objective to give young people a unique occasion to learn more about HIV/AIDS. The 2011 edition demonstrated the extent that African girls and young adults seized this opportunity to tell these stories. Among the 25 frontrunners 17 were girls/young women--the youngest 12 years old. Furthermore, among the awardees of the three grand prizes two were young women.

Burkinabé Fanta Nacro has played an important role in the above initiative, as prominent African cineastes adapted films using these scenarios: A Call to Action, A Love Story, A Ring on Her Finger, The Champion, Iron Will, Peace of Mind, Never Alone, The Reasons for a Smile, Tiger Tigress. Also from the Series, Cameroonian Kidi Bebey’s Looking for a Brave Man explored relationships in the age of AIDS. A young woman seeking a serious relationship demands that her partner act responsibly which entails taking the AIDS test.

Fanta Nacro’s filmography also includes the 1998 short film, Le Truc de Konate (Konate's Thing). The comedy employed as a means of consciousness-raising proved very popular with the Burkinabé public, intermingling an established distrust of new concepts and old-fashioned masculine virility and honour with female consciousness.

With a more solemn tone, Tsitsi Dangarembga of Zimbabwe relays the tragic costs of AIDS in Everyone's Child, directed in 1995. The film focuses on the devastating consequences for the children who are left to fend for themselves after the AIDS-related death of parents. On a joyful note, in Zambian Musola Kaseketi's film Suwi, the young Bupe finds a happy home, while Tanzanian Beatrix Mugishagwe’s Tumaini tells a story of hope.

Kenyan Wajuhi Kamau, of the Film Production Department of the Educational Media Service of the Minister of Education, emphasises the effectiveness of video as a means of educating people about a range of issues, from AIDS to family planning. Using both the documentary and drama presentations, the objective of the agency is to allow people to see themselves reflected in the images. "When you see yourself, you see your situation, then it is easy to remember and change attitudes and behaviour." Zimbabwean Prudence Uriri has also focused on issues related to AIDS and health in general. The Unesco-commissioned Madizela and Samora (2003), and Life (2002) produced by Rooftop Promotions, are two AIDS-focused films directed by Uriri. She sees her role as a filmmaker to open a dialogue regarding the problems that people face, and in so doing they may be better informed.

Tanzanian Women in Cinema, Visual Media and Screen Culture

Tanzanian Women

in Cinema, Visual Media

and Screen Culture

Scholar Mona Ngusekela Mwakalinga asserts that women have always been part of the film industry and have played an important role in the image-making process in Tanzania.

A case in point: the cinema advocacy of Flora Mmbugu-Schelling. Like African filmmakers in general, Flora Mmbugu-Schelling's approach to African cinema is multiple, where she takes on not only filmmaking, but also the advocacy role that is an essential part of the process. In 1986, she created the company, Shoga Womyn Films, whose aim was to develop an awareness of African cinema, its aesthetics, as well as the representation of African images and culture in film, especially as it relates to women. The objectives of Shoga Womyn Films as stated in its brochure are; to produce and distribute African films and films made by women or about women from all over the world; to show for the purpose of entertainment or education African films or films by women or about women; to operate a literary and film club with the intention of conducting discourse on films and pertinent matters concerning African cinema. Her filmography includes: Kumekucha (From Sun Up) 1987, These Hands, 1992, Shida and Matazito, 1993. She was active as a filmmaker during the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, and while her cinema-related activities in the country have been less visible in the decades since, other women have taken the torch.

Beatrix Mugishagwe is the founding chairperson of the Tanzanian Association of Independent Producers and co-founder of the Tanzanian Screenwriters Forum. Her documentary project Unsung Heroines puts a spotlight on women and leadership throughout the African continent. She had this to say about why she undertook the project:

People on the continent of Africa today continue to survive because of women: if there are no women who till the land for food, fetch water, collect firewood, bear children, run the market stalls, the continent would have long perished given its history.Yet when you look in the top decision-making positions of governments, companies and the likes throughout the African continent women hardly feature therein. Is it a wonder then that a young African girl looks around for a role model and all she sees are men and if women then non-African? 

Seko Shamte Tingitana, film producer, writer and director, is co-founder and head of programming of East Africa Television. In 2008 she created Alkemist Media in order to address the lack of relevant and high-quality content on local Tanzanian television stations and the underrepresentation of Tanzania and Tanzanians on international screens. (Source: alkemistmedia.com)

Like many other African women cineastes located within transnational positionalities, their filmmaking practices are diasporic and "glocal" demonstrating, a blurred frontier between birthland and ancestral/parental homeland.

Tanzanian-American Ekwa Msangi belongs to a growing cohort of American/African first-gen filmmakers born or raised outside of the parents’ homeland telling stories about their hybrid experiences, dual identities, relationship with their birth/adopted home and their parents homeland. She is, in fact, part of a cohort of “third culture individuals”. She was born in Kenyan to Tanzanian parents and is now based in the United States. She finds that her Tanzanian-ness becomes evident in the details of her story while her "American-ness" is revealed by her aesthetic choices relating to acting and the camera.

Similarly, filmmaker Eliaichi Kimaro, a first-generation American of a Tanzanian father and Korean mother, tells a personal history tracing her Tanzanian roots in A Lot Like You. Upon retirement, her father returns to Tanzania; she follows him with her camera discovering a side of the family she knew little about.

As I have noted often in discussions regarding African women and film festival practices, an important function of the event is its capacity to showcase on a local, continental and international level, the works of African women, and to serve as a networking space to professionalize their experiences as stakeholders on the global film festival landscape. 

The Women’s Panorama, a feature of the Zanzibar International Film Festival, ZIFF, is designed expressly for the women of Zanzibar. The event includes film screenings with discussions and debates around the themes addressed in the films. The objective of the Women’s Panorama is to establish the visibility of women in cinema, media and the arts in a positive light, as well as a means of education and self-expression. In 2017, ZIFF created the Adiaha Award for Best African Female Documentary Filmmaker, a new special jury award category open specifically to women documentary filmmakers from Africa. Hence, the festival’s commitment to women’s empowerment in cinema is demonstrated with tangible actions.

Similarly, African Women Arts & Film Festival (AWAFFEST), launched in 2018 is a platform to appreciate arts and stories of African women; to celebrate female film practitioners; and to empower aspiring artists. AWAFFEST is held in March to celebrate the International Women’s Month.

Mona Ngusekela Mwakalinga, whose doctoral studies examined the political economy of the film industry in Tanzania, stands alongside an increasingly visible cohort of African woman scholars in cinema, indicative of the growing number of women who are contributing to African cinematic knowledge production. In addition to her above assertion in the introduction regarding women's historical role in Tanzanian cinema culture, her findings show that Tanzania, like Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya, is positioning itself to play a role in the video film phenomenon that is sweeping the continent.

Report by Beti Ellerson

Articles related to Tanzanian women and cinema at the African Women in Cinema Blog

African Women Arts & Film Festival - AWAFFEST - 29-31 March 2019 - Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2019/03/african-women-arts-film-festival.html

Tanzanian-American Ekwa Msangi: storytelling, filmmaking through the lens of multiple identities

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2016/12/tanzanian-american-ekwa-msangi.html

LAFF 2015 - Neema Reed : Our Story | "Notre histoire"

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2015/03/laff-2015-neema-reed-our-story-notre.html

Women’s Panorama Soko, Entertainment and Women Empowerment Programme - Zanzibar International Film Festival ZIFF

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2014/06/womens-panorama-soko-entertainment-and.html

Eliaichi Kimaro: Tracing her Tanzanian roots in "A Lot Like You"

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2012/08/eliaichi-kimaro-tracing-her-tanzanian.html

Women's Panorama 2011 at the Zanzibar International Film Festival

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2011/06/womens-panorama-2011-at-zanzibar.html

A Conversation with M Beatrix Mugishagwe

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2010/09/conversation-with-m-beatrix-mugishagwe.html

Florence Ayisi's Soccer Queens

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2010/06/florence-ayisis-soccer-queens.html

A Conversation with M Beatrix Mugishagwe

Interview with M Beatrix Mugishagwe by Beti Ellerson, September 2010

Image: M Beatrix Mugishagwe

From the African Women in Cinema Collection, 2010

Beatrix, could you tell me a bit about yourself, how you became interested in filmmaking?

Actually I am a TV-journalist by profession; my filmmaking is a natural consequence of that - I began as TV documentary director and then later on I took it to the next level by getting involved in film production. I did not attend a film school but am trained as TV/Radio journalist.

Tanzanian cinema is perhaps small in comparison to other countries in Africa, could you give a bit of history of filmmaking in Tanzania and what you see as its future?

Cinema? If am honest, it hardly exist; after the demise of the Tanzania Film Company as well as the Tanzania Audio Visual in the late eighties, most of those people who were trained in various aspects of filmmaking simply gave up and looked for other jobs to survive. Film/Cinema as we know it simply died in Tanzania till in the mid-nineties when the medium of television brought the art of visual storytelling back to Tanzania - this time though in a different manner. Anybody who could get a camcorder and editing facility became a PRODUZA (this is a bastardization form of producer here) cum Director. That was what the democratization of equipment has meant to the Tanzania film landscape. A curse and maybe a blessing at the same time. A curse in the sense that what is globally accepted as minimum production value does not count in most productions in Tanzania. This leads to marginalization of the content out of Tanzania. A blessing in as much as I see a chance of developing a particular brand of films not encumbered by the western or eastern ideals and values of visual narration - I am ambivalent of this though, because I believe in knowing the rules first in order to break them effectively for my own use - our PRODUZAs just have the latest equipment and not the basic film education.

Women have been visible since the 1980s with Flora Mmbugu-Schelling who is now based in the United States. What is the current status of women filmmakers?

Again, it's difficult for me to talk of women filmmakers - we have TV production which is led mostly by women - nearly all the production houses in Tanzania are managed by women - I believe this is because most of us don't compromise easily and as such we could hardly find a broadcasting house ready to employ us at our own terms.

Tumaini is a feature film which you wrote and directed, how did it evolve?

TUMAINI - which means HOPE in Kiswahili, is a film, which again, came out of my documentary background - Tanzania is one of the countries which has been ravaged but HIV/AIDS since the early 80s. So much has been said and done for the affected adult population. But it’s only till recent that one began thinking of the plight of the children left behind. Children don't vote and as such they are what I consider voiceless. They don't have a politically threatening constituent. Having traveled throughout the country my colleague and I encountered the same story all over: misery, abandoned and desperate children leading to a big number of street children. Children who had run away from their homes, and they still do in order to look for a better life elsewhere after they lose their parents to HIV/AIDS. Most of these children still have relatives but in most cases these relatives are overburdened by the number of children they have to take care of. And some of them like in the case of TUMAINI, they cheat the orphans of the little inheritance left by their parents in the name of family oversight. The film was and still is an appeal to the society and sensitization about the plight of HIV/AIDS orphans.

What has been the reception?

The reception so far has been very positive but we need to distribute it more widely than has been the case to date.

The very ambitious project, UNSUNG HEROINES is a wonderful documentary series about African female leaders. How was it conceived, who are the African women included?

It’s a fact that people on the continent of Africa today continue to survive because of women: if there are no women who till the land for food, fetch water, collect firewood, bear children, run the market stalls, the continent would have long perished given its history. Yet when you look in the top decision making positions of governments, companies and the likes throughout the African continent women hardly feature therein. Is it a wonder then that a young African girl looks around for a role model and all she sees is men and if women then non-African? Today we have gone so far even as to negate figures like Winnie Mandela - a woman who if for 28 years had not kept that torch/fire burning for her Nelson, the world would not have gotten its much revered and adored Nelson Mandela - so the question was what happened to her? From there I started looking into the absence of great African women visibility not only in Africa itself but the entire world. Who do our children look up to as role models when they are growing up?

At the same time, the choice of women is difficult since there are so many African women leaders out there who must be constantly and continuously featured, spotlighted so that our youth know of them and emulate them, instead of looking up to mostly western cinema, music and football idols-because that's what they get to see daily in their homes.

How do you plan to promote and distribute the series?

Distribution is our Achilles heel - originally we had planned to promote the series through the various national television stations by using the SABC Africa back then. We also planned working with the ministries of education in their gender and civic education programmes - but that was theory. In reality SABC Africa no longer exist and most African TV stations demand payment for airing the series. We are partnering with various NGOs who deal with youth and gender-related issues across the continent and we piggyback on their distribution vehicles. In Tanzania we even make road shows ourselves to major centers - so we will for awhile stop producing and become distributors in order to make sure our series does reach the target audience.

Interview with M Beatrix Mugishagwe by Beti Ellerson, September 2010

Unsung Heroines Trailer