Zollywood: Zim Cinema
You know Hollywood, you have probably heard of Bollywood (Hindi Movies Bombay+Hollywood ) perhaps even Nollywood (Nigerian Movies Nigeria+Hollywood) but have you heard of Zollywood?
That could have been the term for Zimbabwean cinema but seems its been all but forgotten. The top internet search results for Zollywood return a 2022 Indian Drama movie.
Not having an actively used nickname for the local cinematic productions is not a reflection of the state of the film industry which is very vibrant, but rather reflects on the lack of stakeholders investing in the uptake of local content. In a way, the 100% local content rule the government imposed once upon a time offered some good framework for supporting local but unfortunately got hijacked into partisan content which years later has seen people shunning the state broadcaster.
We started off so well, maybe some of the sparkle of Tinsletown had rubbed off onto us when Hollywood came to town and shot some productions on location in Zimbabwe, notably the 1985 King Solomon’s Mines and Cry Freedom the 1987 film based on the story of the South African revolutionary Steve Biko, which was primarily shot on location in Zimbabwe due to political turmoil in South Africa at the time of production.
Local productions I remember watching include Jit (1990), Neria (1991), More Time (1993) Everyone’s Child (1995), Flame (1996) and Yellow Card (2000) The production quality was clean and even to date some of these could still hold their own amongst newer productions.
Cant think of anything that came in the early 2000s probably because that’s around the time socio-economic landscape spiralled out of control.. its hard to focus on the entertainment industry when one spends their days in queues for basic necessities… it was bad, you would just join a queue without knowing what it was for, one can laugh now, but 2008 was a bleak year.
Slowly the local film industry has been picking up, people are make productions that gain local and regional accolades.
Funding seems a major challenge with aid mostly availed for “developmental”, edutainment and advocacy type of content. Budget constraints directly affect the production quality, and then there’s the distribution challenges.
As someone who has experienced difficulties in finding local movies to watch and review, you will see trailers for upcoming movies and maybe a premiere event and after that you may neither see nor hear of the production ever again, unless if it ends up on Youtube or a proprietary streaming platform.
I am not sure why local film makers don’t band together and have one robust pay-per-view streaming platform and or loby movie houses to support local film either through Local Film Nights or having movie theatres dedicated to local for example Jasen Mphepho Little Theatre which has been showing local films on Sunday afternoons.
Becoming The Muse 
Your thoughts.. if you will?