Flame Film

Synopsis

Women in African cinema have long been underappreciated even though they have been some of the most important, innovative and politically engaged filmmakers. The Africa’s Lost Classics project has initiated and enabled the restoration and subtitling of a couple of very important women’s films that have been lost, forgotten or neglected: Flame by Ingrid Sinclair (1996) is one of them.

Flame was the first Zimbabwean film since independence and is a tribute to the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army's female guerrillas. In the 1970s in former Rhodesia, the people stand up against the oppressors. As war reaches rural villages, friends Florence and Nyasha run away from home to join the fighters in Mozambican training camps. Both adopt revolutionary identities: Nyasha becomes Liberty, while Florence brands herself Flame. Flame created controversy in Zimbabwe, as the realistic depiction of the treatment of women in the liberation army was seen as anti-nationalist. The film also serves as a critique for post-independence Zimbabwe, and Mugabe’s rule.

Filmmaker Ingrid Sinclair and producer Simon Bright will be in attendance to talk to the audience after the screening.

This event is part of AiM’s focus on Africa’s Lost Classics, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).