Despite facing the challenge of funding, veteran award winning filmmaker Shemu Joyah remains steadfast to produce a film for one of the country’s heroes John Chilembwe.
This comes as the country today commemorates Chilembwe, a Baptist pastor, educator and revolutionary who trained as a minister in the United States, returning to Nyasaland, now Malawi, in 1901.
He was an early figure in the resistance to colonialism, opposing both the treatment of Africans working in agriculture on European-owned plantations and the colonial government’s failure to promote the social and political advancement of Africans.
Having managed to receive funding from Copyright Fund spearheaded by Copyright Society of Malawi (Cosoma), Joyah, the brains behind films such as Seasons of A Life and The Last Fishing Boat, said shooting for the Chilembwe trailer will be done within the next two months.
“We are almost through with all the preparations,” he said.
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Joyah has said the budget for the Chilembwe movie is huge.
“I have not revisited the budget for the Chilembwe film for a while and so I do not have accurate figures at the moment. There are many changes that have happened since I first started working on the project,” he said.
But is he frustrated that the project to shoot the Chilembwe film has taken long?
“I have to be realistic with my expectations. This is Malawi; so, I am not frustrated. Being frustrated would mean being frustrated with being a Malawian, which I cannot manage to do. Everything has its own time and the Chilembwe film’s time will come,” he said.
