By Titos Makondo
The Zimbabwean movie, Gonarezhou, [The land of elephants] has been allocated a slice of slot on mzansi screens.
The anti poaching film, a brain child of the award winning filmmaker, Sydney Taivavashe, has been received with great pleasure in South Africa, marking the norm of World Wildlife Day.
The Gonarezhou film, which has won the Best First Feature Narrative Award at the 28th Pan African Film Festival, was premiered in mzansi on 3 March, leaving film wizzards gnashing for more.
With an agenda of raising awareness on poaching and human wildlife conflict , the film is set to be aired officially on mzansi big channels:Dstv 403 and eNCA day in day out.
It [film] highlights issues on exploitation of elephants and rhinos and narrates the tale from view of point of a poacher who gets sucked into sickening world, desperately trying to find a way out.
“One of the things l loved most about the movie [other than the poaching awareness] was that they cast a woman as the head of the poaching unit [ Tariro Washe], resembling to Akashinga, a park protected by women.
“But they are real life, all anti poaching unit in Zim who l have been following for few years, have been absolutely doing incredible things”, a safari wildlife
blogger writes remarking to the film.
The success of Gonarezhou movie seems like a ball rattling the net for Sydney who have been dreaming of becoming a filmmaker and turning Mashava to a cinema world.
“My dream started in Mashava, 20 years from now, l dream to turn Temeraire Mashava to be a Hollywood of Africa and it will go by the name, Pixel Valley. Very ambitious but we will achieve it”, he said few years ago.
The over- ambitious filmmaker from Masvingo received more support in Zimbabwe, after releasing his first project, Poor Cousins [2021], trended like gossips and hauled him to heyday.
Meanwhile, his pair productions [ Poor Cousins and Gonarezhou] have been nominated for NAMA awards several times, bagging accolades and salutes.
