Everyone's child

New Internationalist, June, 1997

Everyone's Child

directed by Tsistsi Dangarembga

Everyone's Child benefits from director Tsitsi Dangarembga's meticulous novelist's eye. Dangarembga is the acclaimed Zimbabwean author of the book Nervous Conditions and this, her first feature film, has a sensitivity and sureness of touch that belies its modest beginnings. It started life as a teaching pack aimed at raising awareness of the plight of children orphaned by AIDS. There are ten million such children in Africa.

In simple, un-melodramatic terms, the film tells the story of a young family's struggle to maintain a livelihood -- parallel storylines tracing big sister Tamari's efforts in the home village and brother Itai's troubles in Harare. Tamari has to drop out of school and is forced to recycle and sell goods from a rubbish tip, later submitting to a middle-aged shopkeeper's unwelcome advances. Itai has an equally harrowing time at the hands of gang members, some played by real streetkids.

The film maintains a level of quiet realism throughout. There's a genuine poignancy in the dilemmas and the cast is uniformly excellent throughout. It scores points particularly in its refusal to condemn any single character outright, suggesting instead that morally questionable behaviour owes as much to society's own shortcomings as to any single individual.

Some African critics, however, have cited the Western influence of John and Louise Riber's Media Development Trust team who made the film as evidence that it's not really a Zimbabwean film at all. There are times when it does achieve the look and feel of a sophisticated American telemovie -- which in terms of African cinema's long struggle to maintain a sense of cultural and aesthetic specificity, is tantamount to betrayal in some eyes.

Not all audiences see it that way though and a previous Media Development Trust film, Neria, was extremely popular in Zimbabwe. Movies like Everyone's Child do give under-represented filmmakers and audiences a chance to stake their claim -- and it's made by one of the continent's very few black women directors.

The film is available on video from MDT, 47 The Ridgeway, London N3 2PG, England. e-mail: jonpersey@aol.com.

Politics

Entertainment \??\\??\\??\ EE

STAR RATING



Excellent
Very good
Good
Fair
Poor

Reviews by Dinyar Godrej, Louise Gray, Esi Eshun

Reviews editor: Vanessa Baird