Zimbabwean movies get slot on UK channel

Zimbabwean movies, or Zollywood movies as they have come to be affectionately known, are now being screened on a United Kingdom Television channel, Klear TV.

This development has already seen the screening of two homegrown movies, "Neria" and the country's first full HD movie "Lobola", on the channel's Monday slot.

Prolific filmmaker and Zimbabwe-UK Film guild chairperson Rufaro Kaseke, who is currently in London, told The Herald Entertainment a team of UK-based filmmakers had a meeting with Klear TV last week and succeeded in getting the slot.

"Tony Mliswa, one of the most committed Zimbabwean filmmakers in the UK, Demetria Karonga and myself met up with the Klear TV team on Wednesday at their London office and we sealed the deal which will run as along as we provide the content.

"We have hit a milestone in terms of getting our productions on the international platform because for the first time we have been afforded a slot to screen our films every Monday on Klear TV to the millions of Zimbabweans and Africans here," Kaseke said.

He added that this means that "Zollywood" has widened its distribution network to mainstream TV and this is a good signal of the growth of the Zimbabwean film industry.

This will also increase the visibility and exposure of Zimbabwean talent and culture to audiences who were mainly stuck with Nollywood productions but yearning for variety.

Kaseke also said Klear TV had taken a different direction in providing this necessary variety to the audiences, saying they had committed to take Zimbabwean content and push it out to the UK-based Africans.

"Already they have screened two of our films ' 'Neria' and 'Lobola' - so the ball is now in our courts as filmmakers to keep providing the content to a point where we will attract major advertisers to our slots then we will start to generate income.

"So we now need producers to come up with all sorts of high quality programmes from documentaries to short films because the more the content we have the better for us in terms of attracting corporates to advertise on our slots.

These are but the necessary baby steps that we are taking in order to expand our horizon as an industry," he said.

Several Zimbabweans in the UK are excited about this new development as reflected by the comments left on various social media sites.

"I was so happy to see 'Neria' and 'Lobola' on Klear TV, I had never seen both movies and I think this is a good development for all of us here because for those few hours we get to be attached to our beloved Zimbabwe," said Nyasha Mangwiro, a UK-based student.