The Status of filmmaking education in Tanzania

The word status in the title heading this article is misleading, some would say. Some would ask, are you speaking about how much filmmaking is covered in our education curriculum at least from O - level, A - level to Higher learning institutions? Or how many schools/colleges, whether public or privately owned, are training people in filmmaking? Or how many Instructors, Lectures with PhDs or Professors are specializing in teaching this subject? Or how many graduates so far have come out of the school with such education? It’s too many questions to be asked and addressed in just one article.  More acceptably I will just survey, discern and provide an indication on both of the enquiries I have mentioned above to the best of my experience as an instructor, scholar, analyst and future practitioner in Video-Filmmaking. My intention is to analyze the status of film education in building the professional capacity of Filmmakers at the local level.  And so I decided to use the word status. However I intend not to rank the Tanzania Video-filmmaking education, but I will look at its position and conditions towards the growing Tanzania Video-filmmaking industry.  

When Major L. A. Notcutt and Geoffrey Latham, established the Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment (BEKE) in Tanganyika in 1935 and experimented the use of cinema with the minds of our frontiers to see if they can conjure and understand the language of film, I bet they never had a clue that we would be interested and engage ourselves today in making our own films as well.  In 1948 the colonial film unit started producing films at local settings which were meant for education and propagandas of the colonialists. When we took matters into our own hands after gaining independence, still the position and significance of films in propagating development ideas was ascertain. The establishment of the Tanzania film company in 1968 and the 1974 Audio Visual Institute that replaced the film unit was a leap towards the development of the local filmmaking capacity. However the question of education in filmmaking might have been given less attention since then.

It’s in the milieu of our country that when we think of developing education programs, we embark first on infrastructural development. I do the same and discuss first if we have film schools/colleges specifically or with tailored courses in video production and film production. Lucky enough we do have them. We have managed to establish, again in response to the growing needs of such education, video – filmmaking Institute/colleges/ departments over the years. Such departments as the department of Fine and Performing Arts (FPA) at University of Dar es Salaam, the unit of Art, Media and Design at University of Dodoma offers courses in film production as well for Bachelor and Masters Degree students. Institutes such as Institute of Arts and Media Communication (IAMCO) at Ilala Sheriff Shamba, Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT) and Kilimanjaro Film Institute (KFI) in Arusha, these offers tailored courses in Video/Film production for certificate and Diploma students. A quick survey on the graduation statistics entails that a good number of aspirants have graduated with very good grades. Do the math.

However, who qualifies into degree, diploma or certificate programs in such colleges, institute or departments is one seminal factor. I am an alumna of FPA department, and I had a privilege to teach at IAMCO for the past two consecutive years. My experience as a student and with the students is troubled with the issue of foreign language as a medium of instructions in teaching and thereafter during the private-self reading in books and via the internet. Despite the fact this is mentioned as a setback in every sector, education in media is suffering a hundredfold. Most of the texts for instance on video production and film making are written in English and other foreign languages. I have hardly found a book in Swahili on this subject. In such a situation I have always wondered how we can help the enthusiastic – eager to learn students in different colleges/institute who are seeking this knowledge but who find difficulties in the language of video/film production and technology which is in most cases English. However I should insist that everything about this subject is written in books and still new editions are released everyday in response to the changing technology and the newly generated knowledge of film production.

The filmmaking education as an art, technology or practice is not covered, at least at the moment in secondary school’s curriculum. One finds it at the college or university level. Probably, it’s not the perfect timing for someone to start from scratch and reach a point that he/she understands what filmmaking art and technology is all about. Few of us whom to a certain extent have indulged in such studies at degree level we have enjoyed the benefit of the theoretical part of it, and we can give criticisms, analysis and evaluation very well. Are we ending up as such? It’s obviously no, as I have been observing my colleagues such as Amanzi Ali (Rudi Africa, White chair), Gervas Kasiga (Fake pastors) who have made their mark already by producing or co- producing features that enjoyed distribution in the market. But we could have done better with the government support to advance and promote the status of filmmaking education in Tanzania by providing the necessary learning facilities, technological gadgets and teaching aids to such schools and colleges. Other than that, sponsor instructors, lectures to go and further their studies and skills for the brighter future of the film industry which is growing in demand of human resources to handle its production, distribution/marketing and exhibition activities.

We do have frontiers/teachers and experienced people in academia who teach this practice. Mr. Richard Ndunguru at FPA/UDSM has played an inspiring role in mentoring and nurturing the younger generation (including me) who find interest in filmmaking. Lately, we have had Dr. Mona Mwakalinga graduating for a PhD in the same subject. Prof Martin Mhando (Yomba Yomba 1985, Maangamizi 1996, Ron Mulvihill), Prof Amandina Lihamba, Dr Frowin Nyoni have availed in major early 90s feature filmmaking, and today’s trainings, research and consultancy. Still there is a need to encourage more people to get into this field. Use the little resources we already have and face up to the challenges that the academia in this field is subjected to in this era. Need I appreciate also the role of the local and international organizations such Goethe Institute in Tanzania, Alliance Francaire in Tanzania, Zanzibar International Film festival, Maisha Lab in Uganda who have been organizing seminars and workshops intended to reallocate knowledge of filmmaking to the local practitioners in Tanzania. Such efforts have created a platform that helped in exposing the local filmmaking aspirants to the art, practice and technology of filmmaking.

I bet and as it appears, that a theorist can stand and happen to be good at theory only and so is a practical person who does more than theorizing. The merging of the two is a deadly weapon. Few with gifted talents get the best and benefit of it all such as Professor Elias Jengo who is the renowned professor in Tanzanian Arts and Culture. Professor Jengo has managed to paint, draw and sculpt state of arts painting, drawings and sculptures and at the same keep an excellent and undisputed standing at Lecturing. It’s the battle to find the niche between the two extremes that most of the intellectuals in this field should be engaged to. We may need as well to start training students how to merge the fine art motives and values that are demanded in academia, intellectual and professional world of film art with those commercial motives that are demanded by the Industrial capitalist world which enjoys the neo-liberal economy where art is now a commodity and it needs to appeal to a majority of population in order to make profit.  More appropriately media entrepreneurship should be taught along this discipline as well so that we get high skilled – enterprising producers who are profit and fine art makers.

Chemi Chemponda, a Tanzania’s seasoned women journalist, legal assistant, news writer and an actress based in Massachussets, USA, in an interview with Issa Michuzi, December 2010, when asked what should be done to make Tanzania’s film industry grow to the likes of Nollywood (Nigeria) and other successful African countries? She maintained that “let me say it’s become much cheaper to make a film than 20 years ago because of the advent of digital media. I’d like to see people get the proper training in filmmaking. We need people willing to learn from the experts then go out on their own and make their own films”. Education is the greatest blessing bestowed on human kind. Despite the challenges we are facing, let’s seek it and come another season, another trend, and another realm will be that of the gurus who have sought of education and knowledge as a priority.

A Niche of Film Audience in Tanzania

During one of the latest film stakeholder’s discussion on Tanzanian films held at BASATA (Jukwaa la Sanaa) that I attended, Prof. Amandina Lihamba, while giving her closing remarks, she retains that  from her experience in arts “Audiences in arts is created, and thereafter they themselves creates hopes and expectations in such arts”. This argument contented my conscience and I decided to dissect it and see how it can be implied in our context of film art and industry and further loom into its dynamism in terms of film production, distribution and exhibition and so is its prospects. If audience can be created, I have a feeling that it’s high time we start doing the same with our film audience. My concern, over the past articles that I wrote and research I have conducted is that audience are the cause of the dynamism that is taking place in Tanzania film. In the recent research dissertation that I submitted to the University of Dar es Salaam, The changing dynamics in Tanzania film Industry, A study of Dar es Salaam film Audience, the study reveals that the dynamism that is taking place in Tanzania film industry at both levels of operations, that of production, distribution and exhibition is caused also by the audience’s choice of film that they watch.  My further reaches in this article is that these groups of people that make the recently locally produced films their choice have been created.

It’s very comprehensive to analyze and speak about ways that Tanzania film audiences have been responding to films that are locally made or imported over the years of history of cinema and movies since the times of BEKE before I even speak of how they have been created or how they can be created. One of the question before that might be, have they been responding to the sense that these films maintains, is it all about the visual or aural astonishment, or the beauty of films? Whatever the case that might have informed their response, I propose that what has been important in this variety of films to them as audience is the phenomenal meaning, expectations and the hypotheses that they supply to these films. Therefore what they choose to watch is informed by their certainty of meaning and expectations.

 Further into that we may ask, is it the audience’s meaning and expectation that precedes the film or the film is the one that audience chooses to watch and thereafter creates the meaning and expectations and hence the repeated viewing of the same film or rather films that fall under the same genre. Hereafter is it the question of genre or significance of the film to the audience?  Consider the film audience who reads about the film’s plot or storyline from the back of the film cover or through any other access such as reviews on internet, this sort of audience has certain expectations that he/she is digging from the film. This is where my argument lies, that if it’s the authors of the films that create the phenomenology of film viewership and so they create the audiences for their films.

Films are made to be seen. Therefore audience plays an imperative role.  With our locally made films some of the stakeholder hosts that we have lost track of what our films are or should be.  My view is that we are lost if we criticize these films with no records or researched information of what Tanzania film audiences are. What could be their psychology and attitude towards different genres of films that occurs in the history of human development? The fact that film audiences are of complex groups and are in diversity that it takes a lot of consumers/audience research to detail them park another challenge if we are to understand such process of audience procreations towards their films viewership interest and attitudes.

The breeding of Tanzania film audience that I am proposing here starts with the film author’s understanding of the fact that human beings differ in million numbers of ways. The human basic needs and desires towards films vary correspondently. Some chose to watch thriller, some romantic comedy while other will sit for hours watching horrors. Other than that some would chose to watch a film basing on a number of appealing factors such as language, commercial motives, its complexity or simplicity. To conjure what the films is about takes brain muscles. To make a film that demands such muscles takes an author of the same quality. In turn, at the end of the circle it’s the audience who chooses among the pool of different levels of brain - demanding films. Whatsoever it’s the author who initiates the process and once the film is out his authority deplete and he can not tell where his influences ends.

This is the point that I get to realize that we can create a new group of film audience in Tanzania. This starts with identifying and being inspired by matters that informs their consent with different varieties of films found in Tanzania film market and exhibition. What’s important is that we create them to become audiences to our films and we don’t necessarily create what they want. As said above by Prof. Amandina that “Audiences in arts is created, and thereafter they themselves creates hopes and expectations in such arts”.  To create films for them is more or less that you are arguing for them or with them or you are making a statement about the situations and circumstances that surround their lives. This puts us on the verge of contempt again as it demands that we (authors) are well informed and we do understand our society well enough to analyze their situations and the internal and external drives to such. Shall we get that information to our finger tips? How? Let’s read. So much has been written already, it’s upon us to adopt and only to adopt them to screen plays. 

The film audience’s responses may reflect various influences and may act symptomatic of the society in which the film was made. I hope that fact provides us with an understanding as to why no matter what is so critically – what is not film in our locally made films they still enjoy distribution all over the film market in Tanzania and the nearby countries. The images and ways of life of post modern society are being reflected or portrayed in these films with very little or no commentary or statements to speak of the philosophy or socio – psychology of the same in the contemporary world.

Our films should have clear objectives which in some what reason can be to bring hope to the now riveted and history of struggle of the Africans against poverty, hunger, famine, war, ignorance to mention a few. I presume there are film audiences in Tanzania who would enjoy watching Xala, Yomba Yomba, Harusi ya Marium, Neria, Fimbo ya Baba, Mama Tumaini, Rama, to mention a few, its only that these films have limited distribution and are mostly exhibited during festivals where by very few attends them and need I mention also some would prefer to watch films in the confinements of their homes. Such being the case we can replicate from what these films are, probably in every aspect and make films of the same style or conventions and continue on such direction to find our own course, niche or place in the world’s film market. In each and every film I sighted above one is able to find a commercial motives being rendered apparently with the life – philosophy motives or fine art motives. This is the tendency in Hollywood, Bollywood, Nigerian films and so forth. I trust that such films as mentioned above would have enjoyed a wide market distribution if they were made to be distributed for profit or whatsoever. One thing that inspires such a conviction in me is that audiences are also wide and complex enough to find out what they would have chose to watch. They eat what you serve but they have a mandate over what class of service you are providing them. Hence we can speak of the possibility of creating another niche, with a different kind of service and possibly make another group of film audience to support it as they bring their expectations, phenomenal meaning, hypotheses and thereafter causing the dynamism to our growing film industry in Tanzania.

The Maisha Lab in Uganda put it as their motto that if we don’t tell our stories who will, the stories of the hunt will always favor the hunter until the story of the hunt is told by the lion, an African proverb infers. Rambo wins the Vietnam War for the American but we all know what happened during such war.

Brainwaves and Insights from the 13th ZIFF Winning Films Directors

At least every year over the past 13 years, Zanzibar has been hosting the famous Zanzibar International Film Festival. Over the years I have been attending such an important festival for both film audience from around the world and most importantly film directors from dhow countries and globe at large. Well I couldn’t help it doing so this time around as well. Reading the ZIFF program, my first glance was on the message from this festival director, Prof. Martin Mhando. Some of it reads “At ZIFF we act as a vehicle for art and the union of image and sound in film is one of the most powerful art forms we have today. We provide a space to show the amazing, beautiful and stimulating works from Africa and beyond so they can be honored and be given the due time and reflection they deserve”.  That’s exactly what the 13^th ZIFF screened films were, they were amazing and beautiful to watch and stimulated both the souls and minds of the film audience who were gathered to watch them. During ZIFF such films do walk away with awards and prizes and people who collected them are the directors of the films. Their happiness and appreciations didn’t end up when they were receiving their symbols of winning but the day after they were invited for a press conference and this is where I collected from them what I call brainwaves and insights about filmmaking but most noticeably why and how should we be making films.

The following is the presentation, with a little bit of commentary added, of the ZIFF after awards night press conference attended by some of the winning films directors. Starting with Ndoto za Elibidi (75min) by Nick Reding and Kamau Wa Ndugu that walked away with four awards from different awards categories. The film was devised originally as a stage play with actors from the Nairobi slums. This Swahili story pivots around the theme of acceptance and love as its colorful protagonists – parents, where by George has a dream of seeing his four daughters getting good jobs and prospering but the dream is becoming illusory as both members of the family and their lovers come to terms with HIV and ghetto life.

The directors were able to verify what the motives for their making of such a brilliant film were. According to Kamau Wa Ndugu, they were predictive that the film will bring hope to people living in slums (Madhare, Nairobi Kenya) as well as motivate them. Ndoto za Elibidi was running for five years in the slums (Under SAFE project) therefore it’s likely that they had about fiove years of pre – production.  One peculiar and innovatively far-fetched aspect about Ndoto za Elibidi is that audiences in the slums are introduced as third characters of the film and are therefore seen reacting to the play. However what is far more important one should is the moral statement of the film and the moral duty that the two directors were able to attend to.

A word of inspiration for younger and growing filmmakers that Nick Reding was able to give was that it’s not easy to make films, just persevere and keep going, we have seen really interesting and good young filmmakers here and I think there are a lot of talents in East Africa. Mean while Kamau Wa Ndugu had this words …patient pays, we have been very patient with this film, we have been wanting to shoot for the last five years but we didn’t have any money and we decided to just wait and finally we have a film.

Motherland (118 min) by Owen Alik Shahadah,walked away with an award for a best documentary film is a bold, epic documentary that fuses history, culture and politics to tell a new dynamic story of a continent. This fascinating narrative unfolds with interviews from Meles Zenawi, Jacob Zuma, Ali Mazuri and Harry Belafonte.  According to Owen Alik (Producer/Director) “Motherland is a concise overview of thirty thousand years of African history, starting with our first civilization in the Nile Valley, Ancient Egypt and charting the course of African history which is slavery, colonization and so forth to the contemporary moment dealing with the issues that continent face, success stories in the African continent.  Well motherland is actually about “the motherland” which is Africa to most of the blacks living in the different parts of the world, said Owen Alik. The film is a very intellectual vigorous film telling a story that demands a lot of research and objectivity.  However Owen Alik succeeded to a greater percentage to draw the attention and feelings of the diversified ZIFF audience who had an opportunity to watch the film. Owen Alik agrees that it was easy for him since he is also a scholar in aspects of African history particularly the Arab slave trade, African holocaust and West Africa. “That’s my style, doing academic type of themes” Owen Alik maintained. However the film isn’t dry as one may think due to the fact that it treats the academic theme. The cinematographic aspect of the film creates a visual simulation that makes it appealing to the mind and the eye at the same level of impact.

Despite the bureaucracy over the archived – past information about different stories that we always arrest to be a set back towards the making of profound films with such stories as what “motherland” was able to comprehend, Owen Alik maintains that it was his previous works and the validity of his idea of the film that paved his way through the bureaucracy over the retrival of such archived materials in different archives around Africa. There was a point that people he met along the way were directing him where to go and what should be picked for this documentary film. Lastly Owen maintains that the best person to succeed is the one who prepares. Preparation constitute the bigger part of a production than the filming itself which becomes easy if you have prepared. Owen went on supposing that in the process of making Motherland he had to do a solid research “we sepnd a lot of time preparing for example for the academic part of the film, tones of research papers were visited, history of the Swahili coast, the Zanji in Iraq…it’s a glamour and it’s a lot of work.

My City on Fire (5 min) which was awarded a best short documentary film is a short documentary about the 10^th December 2009 – riots in Kampala. People were terrified and rush to their families but not Dennis Onen (Director of the film) who felt the urge to make a video about the riots and he is courageous enough to go out on the streets only to find his city on fire. “Whatever endeavors we are in, though some people may not see it, the rest of the world may see something potential on it that is what makes me strong and gave me the courage and I feel encouraged telling more of the story of African continent” said Dennis Onen.  My city on fire is an instinctive film as the director reacted to the situation in Uganda at the time when the Buganda Kingdom and the central government had a conflict that had reached a maximum point and resulted into a war. “I picked my small hand cam and I was like, I need this story, I need to record it, may be one day I will need it but when I went down the road to this (record) I discovered that it was not just a story I wanted to keep but this was a story to tell the rest of the world”. Dennis went on supposing that the main thing I considered was what story I wanted to tell the world; it’s not only the recording (that was coincidental) I made but the story is what inspired me to go on with the making of this film.

My city on fire is Dennis’s personal statement, having experienced seeing his city burning at some point in his life. Dennis agrees that there are facts in our “motherland” that needs to be exposed. Finally Dennis expounds that he is in line with documentary films and he might continue making them and hence he wants to be nicknamed Dennis “The documentarian”, best of luck brother as such is an endeavor.

Pumzi (21 mins) is a science – fiction made in response to the problems we have with water especially the water crisis in Kenya and I reaction to the bottled water. According to the director, Wanuri Kahiu, Pumzi is holding in check the idea behind bottled water as one of the reason that we privatize all our resources. The director believes that it takes more water to make the bottle than to put water in the bottle. Pumzi is also a response to the ill-care that we give to the environment. The film dictated what genre it was going to be, I just followed the story from the beginning to the end” said the Wanuri Kahiu. Thus she didn’t have the idea of what genre this film was going to be as she was initially writing it.

The film is approximately 35 thousands US dollar budget which in reality is hard to seize for a non – profit project but she managed and she didn’t hesitate to expand on the grounds of such expensive grant saying “the first short film that she already made created a portfolio for granters to be convinced that she is an established filmmaker that can stand for the making of a film from the beginning to the end. However she maintains that she is not a proponent of just making films with grants money “I guess that’s not helping the industry in performing and growing, if you are not necessarily accountable on how that money goes into the industry in the end. She went on supposing that it will be great if we could get more of the commercial world, private sections investments to be able to fund films and get a little more government support. She lastly maintains that with every filmmaker, you are only as good as your last film.

Therefore, if I garner from such brainwaves and insights of the 13^th ZIFF film directors, I would say the reason why we should be making films is that film supposes a personal, moral and intellectual statement on and about the different life situations and circumstances that we live by on daily and from different wakes of life. It at all, we (filmmakers), on my opinion, we could think of films as text with statements to make, we might put this discipline high on top (than it has already been) of other disciplines that culminates on the same fact that “as we live, we come across the situations and circumstances that demands wisdom to go over them, we therefore need a statement of some meaningful actions of redemption”. Can we provide such statement via this medium, film?

  

Thy two opinions on a new trend of video – filmmaking in Tanzania

It’s highly a sense of departure from imperialism and consumption of the arguments/thesis that are conveyed to us about the world through this medium (film) whenever you find that we are now engaging on the making of films with our own hands and brains. I salute the braveness of the filmmakers who initially way us through the stage in development of Tanzania filmmaking industry where films that dominated the market were those imported from Hollywood, Bollywood, Nigeria and South Africa to mention a few. Recently the discussion on this trend has been revolving around the film’s form and structure, contexts and content, history and business. The centripetal force towards the current tendency of releasing half baked films on weekly basis has been the filmmakers themselves plus the monolithic enterprises. What is being wrapped or packaged in these films is originally the image of the Tanzanians. We are now being observed by the rest of the world via the satellite channels as African Magic on DSTV, the context that one may assume that it works to our advantage on the matter of promoting our local film products, is highly a context that loops us on the verge of disdain. However, the world will never be critical of the fact that we are still lugging off in the struggle to comprehend how films tell their stories in the sense of their formal structures but I conceive that they can be critical of the stories that we tell and who do we choose to tell those stories through. It’s upon the former and the later assertion that I will be deriving my two opinions.       

My first opinion should take into an account of what I prefer to call “the soul” of every film that is being made in this world, and this is simply “the story”. In short, the story constitutes a cause-effect relationship between characters, time and space. The story is by itself what makes a good film, apart from other elements and techniques that are employed during the writing of the screen play and later the making of it. To a greater extent the successful adaptation of a story to a screenplay will be the one that follows a certain standard narrative and dramatic flexible formula that has been agreed upon by the filmmakers themselves or rather what is being recommended by the audience. This is the stage in development of filmmaking that we haven’t reached yet, but what happens to the art of storytelling that is believed to have its origins in the diversity of Africans traditions, tale telling and performances? What happens to other sources that we can derive stories from apart from people, such as myths, history, and literature?  

My opinion here  is that we might fail to comprehend the intelligibility of using the electronic movie making technology, we might as well fail to comprehend the dramatic structures and master narratives that has informed the most successful and blockbusting films such as the classic Hollywood dramatic and narrative structure but we should not fail, even under any other circumstances, to tell stories that are compelling and stories that underscores the reality of the situations from our different but daily wakes of life. From early 1990’s Hollywood has produced a consistent style of filmmaking in terms of the narrative stories they tell and how they tell them dramatically, from 1960’s to present what have we produced via this medium? Rather I find that the situation is worsening up.

My second opinion is on whom we should use to hold together the different parts of the story that makes a whole film, in this matter the central characters or the protagonists in any film plays this significant role. What makes them characters is a set of traits such as wit and keen insights but then he/she needs to go through a series of adventures that are larger than life. It’s upon him/her that we see the story and the plot unfolding, through him or her we conjure the message that is being processed to us (audience). However, with our new trend of filmmaking, I doubt that we have been able to modify or forge our filmmaking practices towards this tendency. Briefly, films mechanically reproduce the culture of the people and no matter what happens in the film, the central focus of the film rests with the decisions and actions of a major character who wants to solve, escape or do something to reach a certain defined goal. Again if I draw examples from Hollywood films, you find that an active, goal oriented protagonist is at the center of the Hollywood version of storytelling often motivated by certain psychological traits whether to make the world safe or to complete the journey into the unknown. If a film begins with an enigma or problem that affects the life of the major character, I think we have enough problems to capitalize on; however my query will still be on “who is that major character” in our societies? What should we vest him/her with? Knowledge, courage, wit, wisdom? It’s time we wake up and command our intelligence towards this aspect.

Above are the two opinions that I may use to testify against the cases that we are challenged on the use of filmmaking technology towards the aesthetic of the filmmaking art, we are lacking investors who are willing to provide funds for the making of commercial films, we don’t know yet the significance of the titles we give to our films and so forth. Let’s find good stories to tell, stories that are credible, unified, interesting, simple and complex, stories that handles emotional materials with restraint and lets tell those stories through characters who hosts what is wit, moral, rational and keen about ourselves, our culture.  Nevertheless I wish to find stories whereby writers process a message to audience that brings hope in anything, any situation that they write for or against instead of just portraying what they call reality about Africa.

Facets of “Vimkandala” to Average Film Audience

Tanzania is the host of over forty million people. Approximately over 5 million people are expected to be movie fans regardless of their age, occupation, education level, race, regions that they are found and so forth. These audiences are fond of watching movies in the confinements of their homes, some go to cinema houses while there are many of those who go for local cinema huts famously known as “Vimkandala”. What attracts these audiences to these cinema huts is, among other factors, the fact that some, if not all, of the movies that are screened are movies that have been translated to Kiswahili language. Most of these movies are translated from their original languages but mostly the Indians and the English language movies. The group of people that are accustomed to this tendency is a group I hereby connote them as “average audience”. By average I mean audiences who have no competence in the language that is being used in a movie but they demand to watch the movie with different sorts of pleasure that they obtain from it.

The question of what language is being used in a movie for an audience to understand I believe is also a question of who is the target audience. In this information age or in this human project of living as if we are in one village, we are given access to whatever that appears to please us and appeals to our gratitude and pleasures with little hitches of difficulties. Some are aware of this and what they do is to choose what bears with their social-economic realities. However, within the same trend there are some of us that have failed to make such sorts of choices but rather they seem to look for anything that gives them pleasure regardless of the difficulties. The difficulty of language in foreign or rather imported movies to average Tanzanians is the typical case here.

Movie stories are said to unfold in two major aspects. One is that movies are 70% mimetic/showing us what the movie is all about while the remaining 30% is reserved to the diegetic/telling aspect of them. But however little the aspect of telling is, it plays vital role for audience to conjure what the movie is all about. This aspect of telling is the one that we listen to and cognize, hence language becomes the most important tool in this process of exchanging information from the authors of the movie to the audience. Henceforth, I parade herewith the incidences that we demand subtitles to movies that speaks a foreign language to us, therefore the subtitles should be in a language that we are at least competent with. However there are incidences that even the subtitles are termed to be unhelpful. Such incidences are for instance when you don’t understand even the language of the subtitles.

This is where we find the antecedence of “Vimkandala” or cinema houses in most of the highly populated areas in Dar es Salaam such as buguruni, Mbagala, Gongo la Mboto, Manzese, and so forth. The social composition of the population that is found in these areas is of such people who have certain sentiments of language incompetence of such language as English, let alone Indian.  As this average audience encounter difficulties on understanding the movies that are told in different language such as English movies and those in Indian they turn to this Vimkandala where by the movies that are screened are basically the translated ones from such languages to Kiswahili. If you happen to attend the screening sessions in “Vimkandala” you will find that it is not only the matter of translating, and this is exactly my concern, but also a matter of employing a new narrator to the story of the movie. A narrator here is employed as an omniscient narrator who is looking and explaining the events that are unfolding in the movie from outside. Need I mention also he seem, if you listen very carefully, to be the one who knows everything about what is happening in the movie.

My reservation here is that we are overlooking the unconstructive impact of such translations to many factors of development such as human intelligence. Movies not only that they appeal and involve the minds of the audience to conjure it contextually as well as content wise, but also they are good as brain teasers. They demand the use of brain for an audience to juggle with the plot of the movie story. This is one reason why film theorists have tried to categorize movies among the pedagogic institutions. However among the activities that denies movie such power is the act of translating them by imposing a third narrator who tells the story in a translation and from his point of view. This may cause serious problems to the audience who at this sort of phenomenology are denied the use of their intelligence to grasp what the film tries to propound but rather they are being oriented to it via this new third narrator. If audience is subjected to such phenomena repeatedly, I conceive that his/her thinking capacity is at stake and however helpful this has been to him/her; it shall reveal its cons in the following endeavors such as excelling in education palavers that calls for his ability to think.   

Finally, looking back to the old good days where we had storytelling sessions during evenings that were told to us by grandpas and grandmas, this should be a replica of such atmosphere, the only difference is that now we are seeing what is being told. The fact that we were not seeing what our grandpas and grandmas were telling us and it was upon each individual to visualize what he/she hears is one factor that I consider that tradition as part and parcel of nurturing human thinking faculties from childhood. In the contemporary Tanzania if you step into this “Vimkandala” you will find children of five to ten years concentrating on the screen to see just what they hear at the same time. E.g “anampiga teke pale”as in action movies. I suppose this is one of the negative facets of Vimkandala to average movie audience in Tanzania that the government and stakeholders should not continue to overlook them.