We deserved the award: Zemura
THE National Arts Merit Awards (Nama) are always marred by controversy.
Over the years, most of the debates have been around the music category but for this year, things took a new twist.
Not that there was no controversy in music, what with Killer T going home empty handed, again! The spotlight just shifted from music to the film and television awards section.
The main issue is that drama series “Muzita ra Baba” got nominated as a feature film and went on to win in that category. Filmmakers were up in arms with Nama for the “atrocious error” throughout the week on social media platform, Facebook, and no matter how much some of the adjudicators from Nama tried to explain what transpired, it just seemed to get the aggrieved more furious.
To get clarity on the matter, this publication, which has been closely following developments in the local film sector, caught up with the director of the drama series, Nick Zemura.
Zemura flew into the country last Sunday evening from the USA and he admitted that his production house, Mirazvo, was to blame for all the fiasco.
“We submitted to Nama what we considered to be one of our finest pieces and that was the pilot of the drama series ‘‘Muzita ra Baba’’, which we had premièred at Ster-Kinekor on October 31, 2016. When we entered for Nama we submitted the very same pilot we had screened at the movie house.
“However, what we neglected to look at closely was what constituted a television show, a feature or short film. The length of what we gave Nama was 65 minutes and that to them qualified as a feature. We did not enter a made for television edition, we took the theatre edition that had no breaks for advertisements, it was in the Ster-Kinekor format, so everything about it was a feature length film, although, our target was for ‘Outstanding Screen Production TV’,” revealed Zemura.
Zemura added that it was unfortunate that most Zimbabweans only know of the 24-minute drama on ZTV and have no idea that there is a feature format of “Muzita ra Baba”.
“Unfortunately most people in Zimbabwe only got to watch ‘Muzita ra Baba’ on ZTV as a 24-minute drama series and never watched the feature format, which we premièred at Ster-Kinekor and we shall be premièring it in Washington DC and New York soon.
“So Nama looked at that and put it in the right category, it was more than 40 minutes and that qualified as a feature length. Therefore, the blame on the mix up should come to Mirazvo because we are the ones who gave Nama a feature film,” explained Zemura.
The upbeat Zemura went on to defend their nomination as well as their win, arguing that of all the complaints coming through, nobody has said their content was not good enough.
“Now that we have responded to the issue of a feature length format on merit, the next issue is whether the content is good enough or not compared to other submissions made. What is interesting is that among all those who are complaining, nobody has denigrated the quality of the show.
“I don’t know how many submissions were made but we came out as one of the top three and that speaks volumes about the quality of our work considering that it was just a pilot and not even the full product,” boasted Zemura.
The man who is also the brains behind the drama series “Muchaneta”, highlighted that they would not hesitate to make the same error in future.
“Soon we will be doing a premiere of a soap opera that will be showing on ZTV and we will shoot the first three episodes in movie style and like was the case on October 31, 2016; we will debut it as a feature film.
“So we are inviting all the filmmakers who are complaining, some of whom we haven’t seen their works, to come through and watch, so that in the event that we make the same error as we did with ‘Muzita raBaba’ when we entered for Nama, which was a beautiful mistake, people won’t complain again when we win,” said Zemura.
The award-winning filmmaker reiterated that his team is focused on developing the local film sector.
“Let me point out that we are not here to throw stones, we are very open minded about this. The last time we were at Nama we lost to Anthony Tongani and Nakai Tsuro, and I went and congratulated them. As Mirazvo we went back to the drawing board and we worked hard and today you see the fruits of the work.
“All we want is development of the sector. For the new series, we are planning to collaborate with external directors so if budget permits we will even get Joe Njagu to come and direct an episode and who knows, we can submit that episode and he can win a Nama and when he wins, Mirazvo also wins.”