As kids, our little brains make us believe we know which careers to embark on. For instance, I wanted to become an engineer at eight, a doctor by 11 and by 17, I found myself switching to law because there was simply no science to history, easy – peasy!
All this while I had no clue about filming as a career and yet from childhood my family called me a movie freak. Why? Well, I lived by the television, ate by it and slept off watching it – a television that my family did not even own. I often found all sorts of excuses to go get comfortable at the neighbor’s house because we both shared insatiable desires for watching movies. He had one of those TV sets with a “Kabina.”
In my seven years of primary, I did not miss any film day held by the school. Funny thing is, we watched the same movies over and over to the extent that I could narrate Baby’s Day Out in my sleep. As a candidate my family tried to tone down this feverish film addiction but alas, movies before books, Jack the Giant Slayer before Algebra, made more sense. Of course, I never excelled!
One would think getting a second grade would shame me into pro action but “waah,” a girl was head over heels for the first time. As men are to women, movies were to me. I even became more spellbound in high school. I would skip classes to go watch at nearby bufundas (shanty movie halls). This would immensely frustrate my mother who started changing me from school to school in determined hope that I would find stricter hands to guide me through school.
My amazing grace came in the form of a university lecturer invited to give a career guidance talk during my senior six. He unexpectedly talked about a course that involved filming at university. Definitely my interest was piqued! For the first time I found myself voluntarily doing research on a subject – filming. Ladies and Gentlemen, that is the story of how the library and I first crossed paths.
Unbelievably, this time I performed so well that my mom yet again started to think she could persuade me into joining Law school but my desire and hers were at loggerheads,
“a talent will always be a talent. It will always be with you even when you pursue law and no one will stop your writing,” she would say. She was right, but I was not changing my mind. I eventually failed to join the university because the heart wanted what it wanted, and the mother wanted what she wanted.
In my melancholic state, I instead developed a new passion for writing that when I was not watching movies, I would always be stuck writing poetry or a novel. I would recite some of the poems to my mother and she loved them. She further helped me practice when I got my first gig and cried tears of joy when the crowd applauded me. I made this talent my defense mechanism for pursuing a film career.
I guess when you want something so bad, the universe delivers it to you because one night my brother sent me an internet link to a film training called Sisifilmcollective. I was so thrilled that I immediately perused through and applied. Long story short, I got in. A moment of silence for my good luck. That sense of euphoria was immediately replaced with a million anxieties – how was I going to convince my mother to allow me attend? What if I failed to succeed as a filmmaker? What if I realized that making films was not all that? What if… and so on and so forth.
Anyway, like I said, the universe seemed to be on my side. Tell me why my mom, without much thought permitted me to embark on the Film Lab when I finally gathered the courage to tell her?
With immense joy in my heart and a heavy burden lifted off my shoulders I began on the journey of taking three taxis every day to and fro the training. The trips were tiresome, the classes were intense but at least I was in a space I was meant to be.
Film making turned out to be exactly how I imagined it to be. I expected to understand how they make a movie from beginning to end; how actors bring a script to life, how footage begins to make sense, how cameras work, how the stories in my head finally get on screen.
It is not an easy journey but one that requires dedication. Kudos to Sisi film lab for morphing a dream that has existed for so long into reality!