Zimpapers Logo

Luthando Mapepa Chipinge Correspondent
THE last episode of the cultural television documentary, “Inside Ndau Culture”, which is currently being produced in Chipinge will be wrapped up today, The Herald has learnt.

The television documentary, with 13 episodes, is being produced by Chipinge- born producer Joseph Bhasera Sithole while the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe (BAZ) is financing it through the ZimDigital migration project.

BAZ is financing two productions – “Inside Ndau Culture” and a soap opera named Gaza that is being produced by renowned award-winning producer, Ben Mahaka popularly known as Tom Mbambo, the character he played in the television soap, “Studio 263”.

“We are completing the documentary this Friday (today) and the production has 13 episodes in pure Ndau language,” said Sithole recently.

According to Sithole, the film industry in Zimbabwe still has a fair share of challenges stemming from the current economic under-performance, which has seen financiers becoming fewer and fewer and hard to come by.

“A lot of producers have brilliant concepts that require financing, which is unfortunately very difficult to get. I was fortunate that my production was considered by BAZ under its ZimDigital migration project,” said Sithole.

The 30-year-old producer challenged financiers to have faith in local producers.

“Film production needs support. I have learnt a lot during the production of my documentary. Producers require all levels of support they can get especially given that the majority of them need just a single production to get started,” he said.

The advent of digitisation has seen an influx of film producers grabbing available opportunities to undertake production of films in vernacular languages.