KARE KARE ZVAKO/MOTHER’S DAY (2004, Zimbabwe, 30 min.), directed by Tsitsi Dangarembga; screenplay by Tsitsi Dangarembga; cinematography by Pierre Mennel; edited by Olaf Koschke; music by Kelly Rusike; with Consolata Ngwenya (Mother), Nicolas Mazenda (Father), Sasha Dambakushamba (Tino), Simbarashe Mhowa (Kuda), Belinda Mufute (Maidei), Jonathan Kalapuka (Baby). In Shona with English (and French) subtitles.

In her fiction, her screenplays, and her films, Zimbabwe’s Tsitisi Dangaremgba frequently shows us men who are selfish bullies, taking advantage of tradition to force their will improperly upon dependent women and children. By exercising their traditional prerogatives, they destroy, or nearly destroy, that most central of traditional institutions, the family. Inevitably, though, the women and children in these stories find a way to rise up and assert themselves, often using the institutions of modernity to their advantage, and keep the family alive.

In her latest film, Kare Kare Zvako (which literally means “Long, Long Ago”), Dangarembga turns to the realm of myth to make her points. She distills the abusive relationship to its essentials: a barren land requiring sharing and cooperation for survival; a father-abuser who takes his greed to monstrous levels, a mother-victim who will do anything for her children; transgression, resistance, and ultimate triumph. Blending stark, depressing realism with moments of whimsy and fantasy (including songs and dancing termites!), Dangarembga offers us an unusual, provocative mix of the traditional (Shona tales traditionally reveal didactic lessons and have sung choruses) and the post-modern.

With the relentless rhythm of the mbira playing in the background, we are introduced to a miserable family out in the bush. Dusty and bedraggled (but also beautiful, with striking, symmetrical tattoos on their faces and bodies), the mother is so undernourished that she has no milk for her baby. Her three other children are hungry. There is nothing for them. The father is useless. Good-looking, sweet-talking, he cares only for himself. He will not hunt, he will not provide. As soon as the mother’s back is turned, he goes to a stash of bugs and shovels them into his mouth by the handful, eating them raw, a perfect image of his greed. He cares nothing for others, nor for the civilities of custom and tradition: tradition, and fatherly prerogatives, are there only to be used for his advantage.

The mother, on the other hand, respects the bonds that tie her to her children and to the land. She goes to a distant termite mound and begs permission of the mound to take some of its termites so that she can feed her children—and she promises to give the mound something in return.

Little does she realize that this something will be her own life. That night, she roasts the termites and gives them to her children, refusing to take much for herself. She starts to tell them a story of a time long ago (“kare kare zvako”) when there was a terrible famine in the land, much worse than now (i.e., it wasn’t just a question of a father’s laziness).

Then the father shows up and of course claims his share, bullying the children into giving him their portions. The mother stands up to him, and tells him off, complaining that he will not hunt in the forest like other men. He storms out of their home, warning her that he will get his revenge. And he does.

We now enter a different kind of film, though it’s not exactly clear how we got there. There are no clear, familiar indicators that we have moved from “reality” to fantasy, but when termite men emerge from the mound and begin dancing to strong dance music, we know that something has changed! Perhaps this is a dream that the mother is having, or perhaps this is the story-within-a-story that the mother was telling her children. Or perhaps the entire film is a shifting fantasy without secure moorings. In any case, Dangarembga, overlaying a post-modern sensibility on this traditional tale, will not tell us, allowing the story’s own internal logic to move it forward.

The treacherous father figures out a way to get his revenge and also make sure that he won’t need to be eating bugs for a while: his wife will be slaughtered, and she will be his next meal. He of course does not anticipate that the termites, whom she treated with such respect, will indirectly come to her rescue. Everything that the father does to satisfy his own implacable urges will lead him further down the path to his own ruin.

Really, it’s not that easy to butcher your own wife’s body (physically, but also, presumably, psychologically), so the father must solicit the aid of his children. Morose, but impelled by a force that is beyond them, they comply, and they beg their dead mother to make it easier for the father. (The moving force here is Tino, the younger daughter—a bright, plucky child who seems most like her mother.) The mother responds in astonishing fashion: she comes temporarily back to life, singing and dancing her way back to her own further destruction.

In her dance numbers (which are marvelous, but very strange), she becomes, as it were, the wife of his dreams: sweet, sexy, beautiful, feeding him with abundance, while he becomes the perfect husband: loving, solicitous, and appreciative, with no need at all to feel any guilt or regret (in a sense, we are effectively inside the head of an amoral psychopath here!). Obedient to her children’s request, she initially seems eager to sacrifice herself to his gluttony, then, when it is too late, her song becomes a plaintive blues about how her love has betrayed her. In any case, nothing will cause him to deviate from his monstrous path; in fact, everything conspires to move him along—to his own inevitable destruction.

The film ends back in the “real” world with the mother again telling her children a story. Kare, kare zvako; long, long ago . . . long ago, safely ensconced in the world of myth and fantasy. But, like any proper African tale, its message resonates to us in the here and now. The kind of greed, self-interest, and patriarchal abuse that is denounced in this story has obvious relevance to us today, and not only in the confines of a marriage and family. This simple tale can also be treated as allegory for abuse on a much larger scale. "I take it as a cautionary tale against greed of any kind, whether for power, or oil or whatever," Dangarembga has said (reported by Jane Ciabattari in Women’s e-News). This strange little musical about cannibals and termites offers us, in the end, a powerful moral lesson.

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Tsitsi Dangarembga was born in Mutoko, Zimbabwe. She went to England after high school to study medicine but eventually changed her plans and returned to Zimbabwe. She worked as a copywriter in a Zimbabwean advertising agency for two years, then got a Psychology B.A. at the University of Zimbabwe. She also became involved in the university drama club, and, frustrated with the lack of interesting parts for women, started writing for the stage. Her first play, which she also directed, was The Lost of the Soil in 1983. Dangarembga soon became a member of the theatre group Zambuko, under the direction of Robert McLaren, and at the same time started writing fiction. In 1985 her award-winning short story "The Letter" was published in Sweden. In 1987 she published the play She No Longer Weeps. Her 1989 novel, Nervous Conditions was awarded the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Africa. Nervous Conditions is now considered one of the best novels ever to have emerged from the continent.

After the publication of her novel, Dangarembga shifted her attentions to film, in order to more effectively reach her people. She moved to Germany to study film at the Deutsche Film und Fernseh Akademie in Berlin, where she remained for five years. There, she completed several productions and made a documentary for German television. She wrote the screenplay for Neria (1992), which was a huge success in Zimbabwe and well received around the world. With the release of Everyone's Child, Tsitsi Dangarembga Dangarembga became the first black Zimbabwean woman to direct a feature film. The story of a family of AIDS orphans struggling to remain intact with little support from their elders, its setting alternating between small town and city, Everyone’s Child also featured a striking musical score and was very popular.

Kare Kare Zvako was a co-production with Women Filmmakers of Zimbabwe, an organization chaired by Dangarembga, whose goal is to help women make films from women's perspectives. The film has received a large measure of success, winning the Best Short Film award at the prestigious Milan Festival of African, Asian, and Latin American Film and at other international film festivals, and being selected for screening at the Sundance Film Festival.

--Notes by Michael Dembrow

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