Siliva the Zulu

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Country:Italy

Director:Attilio Gatti

Program:The Lineage of Parallel Cinema

Year: 
1927

Duration: 
64

Summary:

In the annals of African cinema, Siliva the Zulu is a landmark. In 1927, Italian director and explorer Attilio Gatti traveled to Zululand along with famous anthropologist Lidio Cipriani, in order to create a film that would weave genuine anthropological elements into a fantasy of witchcraft and betrayal. He further developed his script with love, hate, intrigue and adventure. Gatti took a Western romantic theme of "boy meets girl, boy loses girl" and stirred it together with ideas of "the tribal," choosing his actors from among the local Zulu tribe members. As a result, Siliva stands virtually alone as an authentic record of Zulu life and culture at that time. Thought to no longer exist, the film was found by Peter Davis, an award-winning Canadian filmmaker and film historian whose collection of works spanning a 30-year history in the film industry is housed at the Black Film Center/Archives at Indiana University.