Submitted by jsterckx on 27 November, 2014 - 14:57.
Made in 2008, iZulu lami (My secret sky) was Madodo Ncayiyana’s first full feature film. His background is in theatre and television, and he has made a number of documentaries.
Ncayiyana came to prominence as the co-director of a short 11 minute feature, The sky in her eyes, made as part of the sponsored First Footsteps project. Thematically it is related to iZulu lami, dealing with the problems surrounding HIV/Aids orphans in rural (South) Africa. The featurette won a number of international awards. Watch a Swahile version here.
iZulu lami tells the story of a ten year old girl and her eight year old brother in rural KwaZulu-Natal who are left orphaned and outcast when their mother dies. Before her death, their mother wove a beautiful traditional mat and had hoped to enter into a competition to win some money for her kids. Trying to realize her mother’s dream, the girl decides to enter the competition and sets off for the big city, Durban, with her brother in tow. Lost and desolate, they are taken in by a gang of street kids, who introduces them to a world they had no idea existed. The young girl is taken to someone she thinks will help, but it transpires that he intends on pimping her, using her innocence as a cure for HIV/Aids, as is believed in large sectors of society. She escapes from his clutches, though, and comes up with a plan.
iZulu lami has received many accolades, and Sobahle Mkhabase, who plays the youn girl, received the Best Actress Award at the main African Film festival in Europe, in Tarifa (Spain).
Even though Zulu is the largest of South Africa’s eleven official languages, films made in it rarely achieves recognition. The reason is that the movies are mostly of a sentimental nature or miserable efforts to reproduce violent gangster films. Yesterday (2004), also dealing with the devastating consequences of HIV/Aids, was the first major South African film made entirely in Zulu, and iZulu lami represents a further major step towards establishing an indigenous film industry of note in this African language.
