Zimbabwean film to screen at Nonstop Aug. 23

Ingrid Sinclair's film "Flame" (Zimbabwe, 1996)
(followed by discussion with Bob Devine)
Monday, August 23
7:00 PM
Nonstop Institute
305 N. Walnut St., Yellow Springs
free admission

Zimbabwean director Ingrid Sinclair’s film Flame aims to recover and reinterpret the history of the Zimbabwean liberation struggle through a narrative of the life of the woman known as "Flame" spanning the period from the height of the liberation struggle in 1974 until roughly 1994, 15 years after independence. Sinclair has explained: "Fighting women are my heroes... I used the independence struggle as a metaphor for the struggle for personal independence of all women." Originally conceived as a documentary, Flame had to be made as a fiction film because none of the seven women on whose experience it was based dared discuss sexual abuse on camera. The film accurately reconstructs conditions in the rebel camps: the extreme hardship and constant danger but also the unprecedented opportunities offered women for education and leadership. According to the Guardian (UK) at the time of the film’s release: “this tremendous film tells a story which is both unfashionable and politically incorrect in its home country…The applause for this film was the loudest at Cannes.”

This is the last film to be screened in Bob Devine's series on revolutionary film that has featured international narrative films produced from 1925 to 1996. The cost of each screening is pay as you are able. For this series Devine has programmed narrative films that are radical or oppositional in terms of (a) production circumstance, (b) form, (c) content, or (d) circumstance of reception. All films will be followed by discussions of their respective historical and cultural contexts. Selected films in the series have been from Russia, the U.S., Algeria, Cuba, Senegal and Zimbabwe. For more information on the workshop series see http://nonstopinstitute.org/workshops/workshop-in-revolutionary-film/

Bob Devine is a film scholar, filmmaker, educator, and internationally respected public access media consultant.


For further information:
Contact Chris Hill (chris.hill@nonstopinstitute.org), 767-2327