Take 1
The audience today is thin but animated. Their excitement must be because of an incisive documentary, "Behind The Rainbow" on ANC’s South Africa. They respond to the insightful and educational films being shown and chat away lightly with each other as they exchange jokes between lighter parts of the films.

Day's Recap
Today’s festival Focus was Zimbabwe. Anyone who has seen Zimbabwean film before Mugabe run mad would want to pick up a huge rock and pelt it at him. I once believed in him but he has strangled the country badly enough; one needs only to watch these four movies to see how badly because they show life as it is behind press lines.

The movies address very socially relevant issues; HIV/AIDS, Cross Generational Sex/ Sexual Abuse, a doubly noble thing except that they were boring. We could forgive them for the poor picture but the acting is too obvious and the scripting isn’t well thought out.
Although I do not find them one bit entertaining, they do have some light parts and the raucous laughter in the auditorium agrees with me. In one market scene, the price tag on a dress is 73 Billion. We laugh very lightly but you can almost smell the empathy in the laughter; there is a trace of disbelief that this really is life for their comrades down there in Mugabedom.

The highlight of the day is "Behind The Rainbow", a 124-minute documentary by Jihan El-Thahri that takes us behind the scenes of ANC’s rainbow rickety transition. It depicts the realities of South African Politics we do not see in the news; the dramatic battle between Jacob Zuma and Thabo Mbeki, the infighting within the ranks of top ANC elite and the eventual divorce of some its top leaders from the party when Jacob Zuma ascended to the party thrown.

Beyond its entertainment value, the documentary is highly insightful and foreboding. As I sit there watching it, I can not help relating what I am seeing with what is happening here back home; comrades of the struggle rewarding each other with spoils of victory at the expense of the people they fought to liberate, the endless power struggles, the propagation of a one party state, and a situation where the issues of a whole country are held hostage by a clash of its leaders’ egos.

At some intervals in the documentary echoes of “Bali mu kintu” (meaning they are in the system) resound from the audience. It is clear the message has sunk. Power corrupts, and it corrupting men every where, not just here. If there is one thing that has stood for me in this festival so far, it is seeing what life really is for Africans in other countries and how absurd it is that we see each other through an international press which is myopic in presentation of Africa.

Review
Today’s review comes from John Kani’s hilarious feature "Nothing But The Truth". It features himself as Sipho an embattled old man trying to deal with the death of his exiled brother and the ever-rising star Rosie Motene playing the forward niece from UK. Set in modern day South Africa, the movie is a very light telling of life for the every day South African after fifteen years of the rainbow nation. It is a story about a man who has to prepare for his brother’s funeral but at every turn he is hit with bad news and had to struggle keep himself and his family together.

On the outside, the movie looks just like any other good comedy. However, in its humour, it tackles a number of salient issues affecting today’s South Africa. Issues like reconciliation, culture shock, redistribution of jobs and the growing irrelevance of politicians to their people’s realities are among the several post apartheid concerned dealt with seriously in this movie.

The general impression I am left with is that those who returned from exile are rewarding themselves at the expense of those who stayed. Inequality is still a big issue and the realities of apartheid are far from over. These realities are summed up in the words of Sipho, John Kani’s character “freedom will not feed me.” However, at then end he leaves with the valuable message that all cannot be done at once but we must never lose sight on what is truly important. As I end this entry, I too leave you with this question; Visionary History; are we listening to what history is telling us?
*Written by Edgar Kangere