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Romance Collides With Political Ideology in Tanzanian Period Drama TUG OF WAR
critique
rédigé par Jerry Chiemeke
publié le 03/08/2022
Jerry Chiemeke, Writer at Africiné Magazine
Jerry Chiemeke, Writer at Africiné Magazine
Amil Shivji, Tanzanian director.
Amil Shivji, Tanzanian director.
Film still
Film still
Film still
Film still
Film still
Film still
2022 BlackStar Film Festival (Philadelphia)
2022 BlackStar Film Festival (Philadelphia)
Festival cinémas d'Afrique - Lausanne 2022 (Switzerland)
Festival cinémas d'Afrique - Lausanne 2022 (Switzerland)
2022 DIFF (21-30 July 2022), Durban
2022 DIFF (21-30 July 2022), Durban

A lanky, cigarette-loving black man sporting an Afro bumps into a beautiful, sad-eyed young Indian woman in an alley one night as the latter makes way to her wedding. It doesn't look like much, but that brief stare sparks a fire that takes on cultural and diplomatic dimensions.
How do you go digging for love in a tense political climate? That's the quest which Tanzanian filmmaker Amil Shivji, director of the feature film T-Junction (awarded at the 2017 Zanzibar International Film Festival), embarks on with his second directorial feature, a period drama titled Tug Of War, based on the novel Vuta N'kuvute written by Tanzanian author Adam Shafi. To interpret his on-screen vision, he enlists the help of Tanzanian actors Ikhlas Gafur Vora, Gudrun Columbus Mwanyika, Siti Amina, Rashid Hemed, and English actor Nick Reding (The Bill, Silent Witness).



It's 1950s Zanzibar. Arabs, Indians and blacks live in segregated communities, all at the mercy of the colonial British Empire. Yasmin (Vora) is made to stop school and she's quickly married off to a much older man, but she soon runs away and finds refuge at the home of Mwajuma (Amina), a former neighbour and a performing artist who lives at the more squalid part of the city. Yasmin soon finds that she's smitten by Denge (Mwanyika), a Russian-educated pan-Africanist who holds a radical view of nationalism.
Yasmin has to hide from her husband, her mother and her relatives, while quickly falling for Denge's charm. However, Denge, who frequently smuggles in pamphlets bearing revolutionary messages, is branded a communist and an enemy of the state. He and his associates have to hold their meetings in private, look over their shoulders for traitors, and reckon with the local administrative police led by Inspector Wright (Reding).

Shivji's fast-paced film explores the scourge of colonialism in Tanzania, and how it shaped sociopolitical relationships in the cosmopolitan island of Zanzibar, even in the years leading up to independence. Rendered in English and Swahili, the movie makes no attempt to whitewash the sour history of British imperialism, but instead firmly beams the spotlight on it. Nationalists were outlawed at the time, and death or imprisonment was the fate of anyone who spoke up against the colonial government.
Yasmin and Denge know that their love is forbidden, and this reality is brilliantly portrayed by Vora and Mwanyika in the scenes where they are together: the constant fear in Vora's eyes and the pensive look on Mwanyika's face are competently captured in the closeup shots taken by Zeen Van Zyl, the film's Director of Photography. Tension borders on the frenetic in the scenes where Yasmin and Denge find that their lives are on the line, with Nadia Ben Rachid and Matthew Swanepoel's deft edits making for a story that is more compelling than most.



Away from the politics, Tug Of War also dwells on the cultural nuances that defined the city of Zanzibar. Van Zyl's crane shots help to provide perspective on the city's rich architecture, but full credit must also go to Hawa Ally Issa, the film's costume designer, whose work on the wardrobe to illustrate 1950s Zanzibarian fashion gives Shivji's work a more credible look. The music of the times finds a way to seep in as well, with Amina's role as a singer at local bars depicting how music served as a melting pot for everyone, Indian or British or African.
Tug Of War succeeds in creating a feeling of nostalgia and providing useful social commentary, while at the same telling a love story that is as moving as it is unforced. The dialogue between the lovers is sparse, but a lot more is communicated in what is unsaid. With this movie, Shafi's novel is afforded a fitting adaptation, and for Shivji, this should be a turning point in his desire to put Tanzanian history on the map via cinema.



Tug Of War has been nominated for Best Feature Narrative at the 2022 Blackstar Film Festival (3-7/08/2022), and is also the closing film at this year's Lausanne African Film Festival (Cinémas d'Afrique Lausanne, 17-21/08/2022).

Jerry Chiemeke

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