Country:Italy

Director:Attilio Gatti

Program:The Lineage of Parallel Cinema

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.