AN INSPIRATIONAL singing group that overcame insurmountable odds, including the curse of their own people, to soar on a global stage, pulls the focus in a feature-length documentary lined up for TopTV’s Fox FX channel at 8.30pm on Saturday.
The film is ITHEMBA(a Zulu word meaning “hope”), which tells the poignant story of Liyana, a never-say-die group of Zimbabwean musicians with physical disabilities, which won an award recently at the 14th annual Zanzibar International Film Festival.
The documentary was filmed in Zimbabwe, directed and produced by Elinor Burkett, and produced by Errol Webber, who also shot and edited the film. It premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival in November.
Challenges
The film was among 17 contenders for the festival’s Ousmane Sembene Competition for which films submitted must tackle social, political and developmental issues with the aim of being informative, educating and entertaining.
The competition is based on the ideals of Sembene, regarded by many as the “Father of African film”, whose films were made with the intention of encouraging audiences into action against any injustice.
Shot during the troubled Zimbabwe presidential elections of 2008, the film unfolds against the backdrop of political tension and the daily struggles to find a bank with money to buy food and to navigate through the streets with wheelchair-mangling potholes.
“The documentary follows the physically impaired members of Liyana, who live in a land where they are considered cursed because of their disabilities,” says a TopTV spokesman.
“The funny and talented young singers take viewers across the city of Bulawayo and into remote villages, to rural bottlestores and urban marketplaces, inside the huts of traditional healers and the neighbourhoods of the urban poor – into an Africa rarely seen by outsiders, a place where tradition is not necessarily gentle, where it threatens to trap the unfortunate, and where a few fight back.”
All band members are from the King George VI School for physically disabled students, where pupils are empowered with confidence and the ability to live as independent a life as possible.
The movie has now also been nominated for an award at the Trophees des Arts Afro-Caribeens in France.
It’s also worth noting that three South African films are scheduled for DStv’s Mzansi Magic channel soon, first up being the fun BUNNY CHOW, at 8.30pm next Tuesday.
This feature involves three local comedians and a weird guy named Cope, who embark on a raucous weekend journey to Oppikoppi, South Africa’s biggest rock festival.
They slip out of the city for a few dusty and increasingly absurd days with hopes of mass debauchery and conquering the comedy stages, but they get a bit more than they bargained for.
Also lined up for Mzansi Magic on Tuesday, at 10pm, is a Leon Schuster comedy, the 1989 candid camera success, OH SCHUCKS, IT’S SCHUSTER.
And ring Saturday, July 23, on your calendar for the 7pm screening of the South African comedy, FOOTSKATING, which tells of a poor miner’s son who, in an attempt to save his town, his grandmother and his home, and avoid working in a dangerous mine, sets out to pioneer his made-up sport of footskating.
It’s a venture that requires the help of a team, the understanding of his conservative father, and the willingness of the world to accept a new form of extreme sporting madness.
