Strip club inspires filmmaker
THE search light that directs people to Bulawayo’s first strip club, The Private Lounge, which has been the talk of the City of Kings in the past two weeks has inspired renowned filmmaker, Priscilla Sithole-Ncube, to produce a 20-minute documentary titled “The Light”.
It is atop the Cecil Hotel in Bulawayo’s Central Business District and directs people to the Private Lounge, a premium adult entertainment club that features nude pole dancing and strip teases among other acts that go with such a facility, which was launched a fortnight ago and was an instant hit in the city.
When it is overcast the light can be seen moving in the clouds from East to West and has attracted a number of stories in the city with some people thinking it was an unidentified flying object while the biblical ones have taken it to be the sign of the times, giving an apocalyptic ring to it.
Some residents are said to have driven from as far as 20 kilometres to make out for themselves just what sort of “cosmological feature” it could be as some thought it was a solar eclipse making the search light, in a way, the “most mysterious object” in Bulawayo in recent years.
However, on Thursday, Sunday Life discovered that the light has inspired one of Bulawayo’s top film makers — who in 2014 lived every budding film maker’s dream visiting and attending a training workshop in Hollywood, Priscilla Sithole-Ncube, a film producer with Ibhayisikopo Film Project.
Ibhayisikopo Film Project is made up of people with a passion for development of communities through film and film making and strives to be a “world class women driven centre that nurtures and harnesses the inspiration of young children, girls and women’s dreams through film-making”.
Sithole-Ncube, an award winning film maker said she was struck by the idea of making a documentary inspired by the search light when she heard stories about what residents thought it was.
“I was struck by the stories that the light has generated among Bulawayo residents seeing the light from different perspectives and it hit me that I could do a story about the light and decided to call the documentary The Light,” she said. “This is what we do as film makers, we tell stories, interesting stories. I know the light directs people to the strip club but the documentary will not be having footage from it. The filming will be outside in different parts of Bulawayo about a number of issues. The light will generate its own stories and most of the shots will be evening shots.”
Sithole-Ncube is the director and producer of the film aptly titled “The Light”, a 20-minute documentary shot in Bulawayo which will be in Ndebele with subtitles in English.
The documentary is being jointly produced by Ibhayisikopo Film Project and Multi-media Box.
“The documentary is work in progress and we are busy gathering the footage and we have lined up the interviews and hopefully we should be able to premiere it in July (next month),” she said. “We are grateful that we were well received when we told those in charge of Private Lounge about the documentary,” she said.
Sithole-Ncube said it will not require a big budget to produce the documentary as Ibhayisikhopo Project has a production house which will be used in making the documentary.
“I have also been reading WhatsApp messages about what people are saying about the light, all sorts of stories. I suppose you have also read them and as I can tell you I am excited to have a documentary about light and it’s the light which will tell its stories,” she said, giving a tantalising teaser of the documentary.
Sithole-Ncube is credited with forming an all female musical group in Bulawayo and has a passion for producing works which celebrate womanhood.
“Apart from the documentary, “The Light”, I am also working on another documentary on the success story of the Lupane Women’s Centre as well as a series of queens that celebrates women who have been pioneers in different spheres of life women like Nyamazana, Lozikeyi and people like the late Matshazi of Guta Ra Mwari Church who was the first black woman pastor in this country,” she says.
“Even women in politics, the first women to join the armed struggle for instance, we must celebrate them. Issues to do with girls and women are my passion and that comes out in my work.”
Lupane Women’s Centre is a successful non-profit making membership-based organisation which is in 28 wards of Lupane in Matabeleland North and uses its resources to empower women and was established in 1994.
Sithole-Ncube says she has been invited to attend a film festival in Ethiopia which will give an opportunity to learn more about film making.
“When I went to Hollywood, I learnt that film making is serious business and an effective communication tool and in the United States they invest a lot of money in it and we are in the right direction locally but it’s a process, it will not happen overnight,” she said. “People here will realise with time that it is worth investing in the entertainment industry. I am happy we have the digitisation programme under way in Zimbabwe.”
Digitisation is expected to result in the improvement of quality of broadcasting content.
Zimbabwe’s film industry has generally been dogged by under-funding while Hollywood on the other hand is a multi-billion dollar film industry whose products are marketed throughout the world.