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Screens Sunday, June 17, at the San Francisco Black Film Festival
The film "Maangamizi: the Ancient One," a collaboration between American filmmaker Ron Mulvihill, his wife, writer Queenae Taylor-Mulvihill (Gris -Gris Films), and Tanzania director Martin Mhando, looks at the relationships black people left undone when some of us were wrenched from the African Motherland. However, on a smaller scale, "Maangamizi" plays out the cycle of what happens when the dream catches reality and we have to face our demons.
"Maangamizi" is the story of what happens when tradition meets modernity, or foreign ideas or ideology. Starring three women — Amandina Lihamba as Samehe, Barabaro as Dr. Asira, and Mwanajuma Ali Hassan as Maangamizi, the ancestor — the film begins at the asylum where the mute Samehe lives. Self-absorbed and silent, Samehe's story unravels through flashbacks and a certain visual imagery that allows us to see what is going on in her mind.
Samehe is referred to the American psychiatrist Asira who is running from secrets as well. Both women are closely monitored by Maangamizi, the ancestral spirit, who knows both their stories, and helps each of them face past hurts so that they can move forward.
The journey is full of ancient magic and healing rituals that easily escape from the screen into the hearts of viewers, even though the slow moving narrative film with its non-linear format initially tried my patience — elastic though it was. Patience paid off, however, especially when the two women climbed a mountain, walked along beautiful beaches and visited sacred places in the between worlds — where human beings don't belong.
The cinematography here is elegant, and perhaps a bit scary. I also liked the special effects and the surprises, which really helped move Samehe's story along before the linear American Asira came along and hipped everyone to the program. The plot only thickened more when Asira started having nightmares and getting the shakes as she tried to forget painful memories of her grandmother's murder.
"Maangamizi," in Swahili with English subtitles, is a woman's story even if Dr. Moshi (Adam S. Mwambie) runs the hospital. Where Sankofa tells the story from the perspective of the colonized, "Maangamizi" offers practical steps on how each of us can silence the nightmares through forgiveness.
It is interesting how a propo it is that the film is set in a mental hospital. I asked writer Queenae about this and was surprised to find out that the screen play, which was originally written with Bette Davis in mind, was actually based on the Greek goddess Hekete who governs the mind.
Between talk about production, location, financing and the fact that this seven-year venture sewn together by faith doesn't have distribution, that crew and cast members still haven't been paid, and how that's not stopping the husband/wife team from moving along with plans to shoot a new film, a quasi-tragic comedy about Queenae's mom who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's are just a few topics the three of us spoke by phone last week about, as we discussed "Maangamizi"'s journey from script to screen.
Ron comes to film from a science background and his first short, the 36-minute, award-winning "The Marriage of Mariamu" (1985), bridged the two disciplines as he zoomed in for a closer look at Tanzanian traditional healers. Dreams of being a scientist disappeared just prior to that as Ron switched horses at UCLA and got his MA in film studies, where his wife Queenae also received her master's degree in the same department.
The two have made a great team on this joint venture, when Ron and Martin Mhando, who Ron met in '85, looked for a script idea for an Anglophone film venture, the first such venture to come out of Africa.
Martin, who loved Queenae's "Hekete," one, for its uncanny use of Tanzanian motifs like twins who disappear, and two, for the psychiatrist and the Greek destroyer goddess Hekete who Martin changed into Maangamizi, an ancestral spirit, whose name means "destroyer."
In 1985, when Ron's first film played the West African film festival FESPACO in "Burkina Faso (West Africa), the festival was dominated by films by French speaking African countries, not to say that the Tanzania government sponsored film agency was not top notch too, because they were very well educated in the best schools abroad. They just didn't have enough work outside of small jobs on local networks and the European film industry. "Maangamizi" was just the thing to get the juices flowing once Martin and Ron hooked up again.
From Hekate to Maangamizi
Queenae: Hekate's the crone, she's considered the destroyer goddess because the whole notion behind her is that she comes and looks at your life and sees if it's screwed up, and if it needs to be gutted and started all over again because you don't have a proper foundation. She's there to help you rebuild what needs to be rebuilt, and so that was sort of the thing that I sort of went with in writing the original screen play.
As I came to understand Maangamizi's character, (I found that) her nature (was) very loving and compassionate and that there were these threads of forgiveness which is like running through (what I found) every time I would investigate or look at (her character.) That ended up being the whole theme of the film — this whole notion that you have to go down this path of forgiveness before you can truly heal yourself, and you have to know compassion. And so that's how we ended up with the original Hekete script.
The Swahili speaking audience is actually attuned to the meaning of the actual names of characters, like Samehe means forgiveness, Asira means anger, Zeinabu (mother) child of god, Maangamizi destroyer, nurse Malika means angel had a common ethnic name."
Wanda: There are so many different layers of symbolism — where is all this going?
Queenae: The original script has the (action) also set in a mental institution, that's Hekete's domain, that's her field of play, and even now if you go into any (mental) institution, these are those folks who this goddess is governing, that she's looking to lead through the (thing they are fleeing or chasing).
The patient doesn't talk because she's been traumatized by this death of her mother being burned by her father because he was this preacher who'd taken this concept of (god) and denounced all indigenous worship.
Maybe I came to this idea because at the time in '86 when I was at UCLA I was into this very spiritual way of looking at things that didn't necessarily fit into any mainstream religion. I was sort of on the outside and most people I interacted with couldn't accommodate that kind of spirituality. I think that's one of the reasons why I chose (to juxtapose the two ideologies: Christianity and indigenous faith). All the time people say this is heathen or this is pagan, (when) in actuality "this" is a person who is probably more Christ-like than the person who is actually preaching, so there was that element to it."
Location
Ron: And also even though there's this sort of synthesis of the message in Samehe and these different locations — the asylum, the mother and (her) ruins and Samehe's being silent and Asira hiding in her profession — in a way everybody in the film from the father on sort of created their own prison: Samehe chose silence in the asylum, the mother was protecting these ruins, everyone was stopped by something and the key which Samehe finally realized and what Maangamizi was trying to show people was that the key to unlocking all the prisons that they created for themselves by going back to face with these fearful times is to forgive those who were in a way responsible for them.
The story brings out how everyone took part in the healing. Maangamizi teaches Samehe how to regain her power. Samehe and Maangamizi teach Asira how to regain her power. Samehe teaches her mother to see what's holding her back, so every person in the script is eventually empowered by (resolving the issues or problems that hold them back.)
Another thing that people from Tanzania might key into is location. We shot the film in a town called Bugamoyo, which means, "Lay down your heart." And actually (this site) was one of the largest slave ports where the captives would — actually, that asylum was a holding fort for the captives, the lane that Asira and Samehe are walking down where all the trees are on the road — that's Mango Lane, the last mile walk where the Africans walked to the ship from the holding area. It's now a mission.
The trees that grew up along the lane are a result of their last meal, which was a mango. The discarded mango seeds sprouted all those seeds along that path. That's where they said: "If we have to leave Africa then we lay down our hearts here. So the film really is in a way for all of us to reconnect back to Africa and take back up our hearts.
Wanda: Was it intentional to shoot it there?
"No," the two say together, "that's where the spirit directed us."
Wanda: So how long did it take you to shoot the film?
Ron: "We initially started shooting in 1994. We shot for 4 weeks, but we ran out of money and some of our investors in Tanzania fell through so we actually had to regroup, and it took us 3 more years to raise more money. We went back in 1997, and shot another 3 weeks. The stuff in '87 is the mountain stuff — that was a major thing.
"The hanging stuff — most of Asira's story was shot in '97."
Commercial suicide
"Basically making a film in 35mm is so costly, the time element was mostly due to just having such a hard time raising money and because everyone in Hollywood said basically: 'You're doing a film in Africa, in an African language, about three black women — this is commercial suicide.'
We feel that everything that people think will make this film not commercial is exactly why it will be commercial, because there is a vacuum for this type of story."
Rituals
Ron: Another thing that I want to let you know about was … in East African spirituality, the mountain (is important), even the word for "mountain" is important because it also means "god" — this wasn't in the original script, that was my addition."
"I wanted to kill him when we had to hike up that mountain," Queenae adds with a chuckle.
Wanda: So everyone went up the mountain?
"Yes, for me it was a ritual for the world because we had an international crew who have all donated their time. So far — they've all deferred their payments. No one's been paid for this movie. Everyone's going on its merit and hoping that it will do well, so that they can get paid."
Wanda: You mean your cast and all these producers. Even your composer — Cyril Neville.
Ron: "Only people who've been paid are the Hollywood institutions that will not defer costs."
Wanda: Wow.
Ron: So our casting crew, we went into contract to [hire] everyone on deferment, so those equal about $500,000 in deferments, and then the actually out-of-pocket costs are probably about $100,000 on credit cards and we raised about $400,000 thorough small investors.
"That was the main reason why it took so long, but anyway back to the mountain and the spirituality of East Africa. Like in West Africa, the orishas are alive and well and god is worshipped through manifestations in nature. In East Africa, the worship is through ancestor worship like the Catholics do with their saints. The mountain is in a lot of the different ethnic spirituality — Mungu in Swahili means God, but it also means mountain and god in some languages.
"It's something that's pretty universal to mean, something that cultures like the Indians in America, in India, Africa or China, it's sort of this universal theme — we felt that the ritual, Asira's healing, was this climb up the mountain. The ritual put closure on everything."
Queenae: But you know the other thing I wanted to add about Bagamoyo was that the (town) was a lot like New Orleans, the spirituality there. New Orleans is a place people go to do magic. The reputation of Bagamoyo in Tanzania is when someone does something to you and you're angry about it they'll just look at you and say: "tomorrow, I go to Bagamoyo," which means "tomorrow I go to put a curse on you." So it's really strong and the fact that we ended up going there to shoot in the midst of the spiritual aspect and the spirits who were present there was a really interesting experience for everyone: the cast and crew. It was fortunate that we all came in this really good space and we were very welcomed by the spirits that are there, and we literally in '97 didn't start shooting unless we did prayer. Someone on the set led us in prayer. We knew (to not) even go there without acknowledging sprit that is present.
One was because most of the people were going there to contact the spirits for negative purposes. We were there for positive purposes. This was also an acknowledgment of all the tragedy and horror that had taken place in Bagamoyo — the slave trade. It was very powerful and I think everyone who worked on the film or had any association with "Maangamizi" — because the film speaks about truth, a lot of time the (shoot) would stop because the cast, crew the director all of us me included — who were bold enough to speak about truth in the film, had to (be certain) we were living it in our daily lives.
In other words, all of us were tested with our own "maangamizi" or destructive experience. We all had to learn the compassion have, the forgiveness, all of the elements that are talked about in the film. We had to actually take those on and learn those lessons."
Three people died before the film was completed and the director dedicates the film to them. Ron and Martin were propelling a project that definitely had a life of its own — from casting choices to set design. See www.grisgrisfilms.com for some fantastic stories.
Cast
Bibi (grandmother), played by Mwanajuma Ali Hassan of Zanzibar, is a taraab singer from the group Culture Club. She was actually the director's second choice. Their first choice was nixed because the singer's salary requirement was beyond budget.
Queenae: What Bibi brings to that role is so much more than I had written [into the part]. She has that softness and that gentility and the message for me from the spirit: it was enough to see all of the harshness and all of the difficulties and struggle that I'd written into the character to begin with, it was almost as if that the ancestor spirit wanted me to recognize that there is more love and compassion in that character than I was putting in it."
Wanda: And she could get feisty when she had to. She really shocked Asira when she kept on running and wouldn't stop. Maangamizi had a lot of different levels of movement in her character.
"Yes that's true," she agreed.
Wanda: Was everyone a professional actor?
Queenae: Amadina and all of them were professional actors. I think "Maangamizi" was the first major film that actually was looking to broaden their horizons beyond Tanzania, except the character Odhiambo, played by Waigwa Wachira, who was Ron's drama professor the year he was at the University of Nairobi as an exchange student. He was in Gorilla's in the Mist. The rest of them, I don't think they'd been in any major films … mainly just small venues in Europe or something. This is actually the first Tanzanian American feature film."
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