Movie reviews

NZARA  - HUNGER

Watchable. It's a compelling performance but not a movie - it has wonderful voice actors, the sound comes from both sides and the screen but the picture is awfully static, it's just decor which changes as seldom as theatrical decor would. The thing is voiced in English with insertions from Shona. The play is based on oral literature: with repetitions and a modern version of a myth explaining the world. No physical hunger features in the content, it's abstract only. Music can be heard only in the background to speaking. I hoped for more African tunes and on their own. The film's translated by writer-director Klara Wojtkowska herself which is surprising since in her version English 'fill' ('napełnić', 'wypełnić' in Polish) becomes 'zatkać' ('block', 'clog').

Klara Wojtkowska is a musicology and African studies graduate. For the last 2 or 3 years she lived mostly in Zimbabwe but she's been an emigrant all her life. The film has its own history: She fell ill in the US, saw a Zimbabwean healer who told her: "You're in the wrong place. Speak to your ancestors" which led to: "Go to Zimbabwe." She refused but got more and more ill. She healed in Zimbabwe. It took her 3 weeks to write the play. Originally it was a theatrical play on show in Zimbabwe but after just one day the police ordered to take it down. There's actual hunger in Zimbabwe which is a possible explanation. The police didn't say why. That's how censorship works. So you won't say a lot instead of that one thing the censor picked on. She had limited time and money to make it into a film which it became out of necessity. One of the actors did electronic engineering in Poland. A theatre in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe is interested in making it into a musical.