From Fimbo ya Mnyonge to my wife is a snake: A love letter to Tanzania’s beautifully chaotic film genius

DAR ES SALAAM: IF you ever want to witness creativity in its purest, wildest and most gloriously confused form, don’t waste your time in Hollywood. Skip Bollywood too while you’re at it.

Just take a lazy afternoon stroll through Mikocheni, Sinza or Tabata in Dar es Salaam.

Somewhere between a half-finished salon and a barbershop named Obama Cutz, you’ll spot a cameraman balancing his canon on a plastic bucket.

Nearby, you’ll see an actor rehearsing his lines with a sugarcane in his mouth and a director yelling “Action!” loud enough to startle three goats and a passing boda-boda.

That, dear reader, is where the real cinema lives — the Tanzanian film industry, where chaos has its own Director of Photography.

Let’s call it Bongowood, the world’s most enthusiastic, unpredictable and accidentally funny film ecosystem.

You have to salute these dreamers.

In a land where half the film equipment comes from weddings and the other half from church crusades, the fact that a movie appears at all by sunset is nothing short of witchcraft.

The actors are self-taught, the producers self-funded, and the scripts are usually born on the back of a receipt sometimes between two power cuts and an M-Pesa delay.

Yet somehow, by the end of the day, someone shouts “Wrap!”, a USB blinks and voilà — a film is born. Cinematic sorcery, Bongowood-style.

Of course, Bongo cinema didn’t just drop from the clouds one humid evening. Long before anyone yelled “Cut!” in Swahili, Tanzania was already flirting with the lens.

In the 1960s, when independence was still fresh and optimism came tax-free, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere decided that film could knit the nation faster than politics ever could.

So, in 1968, the Tanzania Film Company marched in, armed with Soviet-flavoured manuals, socialist discipline and one camera that weighed roughly as much as a Land Rover.

Early productions like Fimbo ya Mnyonge were half sermon, half cinema — righteous tales of moral fibre and justice, delivered with one lens, two actors and limitless sincerity.

If the shots wobbled, so did the young republic, but both held their posture with pride.

Then came the drought years — the 1980s and 1990s — when Tanzanian film disappeared faster than petrol during rationing.

Cinemas became churches, projectors turned into furniture, and the Tanzania Film Company became the sort of thing old cameramen mumbled about in bars like a mythical creature.

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Editing meant rewriting a love letter twice and acting gigs were replaced by survival.

But just when everyone thought the curtain had closed for good, Maangamizi: The Ancient One appeared in 1999. Prof Martin Mhando and Ron Mulvihill’s haunting whisper that the Tanzanian camera still breathed.

It travelled all the way to the Oscars, politely knocking on Hollywood’s door with Swahili subtitles, as if to remind the world: “Excuse us, Tanzania is still here, just temporarily buffering.”

Then the new millennium rolled in like a tax refund, unexpected but thrilling. Cheap digital cameras, pirated editing software and a national sense of why not? flooded the streets.

Suddenly, anyone with ambition and a cousin who owned a tripod could become a filmmaker.

Kariakoo hawkers sold VCDs faster than they sold mandazi, and Steps Entertainment rose like a cinematic empire, pushing out films at a rate that would make Marvel Studios blush.

The formula was simple: One camera, one take, one miracle.

And from that glorious chaos came the stars, the likes of Steven Kanumba, JB, Richie Mtambalike, Auntie Ezekiel, Rose Ndauka, Ray Kigosi — actors who became household names without ever seeing the inside of a film school.

Their films were pure Tanzanian melodrama: Love triangles sharper than TRA forms, jealous aunties plotting revenge, haunted rentals and of course, the legendary “rich uncle with secrets.”

The cameraman was a multitasking acrobat, one hand on the tripod, the other on a plate of chipsi dume.

The lighting guy was the producer’s cousin who swore “the sun is enough.”

sound engineers began every scene with a short prayer and editors worked on laptops that sighed louder than the actors.

And yet, somehow, movies kept coming.

It was as if all of Dar had conspired to prove that if Nollywood could do it, Bongowood could do it louder, with more laughter and definitely better dancing.

But somewhere between enthusiasm and electricity cuts, the magic misplaced its discipline.

Plots wandered like uncles at weddings. Characters died and reappeared without explanation. Dialogue often sounded like a family WhatsApp group. Continuity became folklore.

One episode ended with a wedding party, the next opened with the same groom selling matunda in Manzese.

Yet audiences forgave everything because these were their stories, their faces, their humour, their heartbreaks.

Still, humour remains a national superpower. No one laughs through adversity like Tanzanians.

We can turn tragedy into comedy, bureaucracy into farce and a blackout into a romantic lighting setup, all without breaking a sweat.

But imagine if that humour had structure, if chaos learnt choreography.

Picture an epic about the Maji Maji Rebellion, shot like Gladiator, scored with traditional drums, acted with conviction.

A Songea warrior clutching sacred water as German troops close in and a drone finally capturing a sweeping aerial shot without colliding with a mango tree.

That’s the movie that wins both awards and goosebumps.

Instead, we get My Wife Is a Snake, Part 8: The Snake’s Revenge.

Entertaining? Certainly. Educational? Only for aspiring snake handlers.

Fiction isn’t the villain here. Mediocrity is.

Every country needs escapism, but escapism shouldn’t mean escaping excellence.

It’s time filmmakers decided that “good enough” has expired.

Tanzania needs real writers’ rooms, continuity editors and cinematographers who understand that lighting isn’t brightness, it’s emotion.

Kenya has Selina, Nigeria has The Johnsons, South Africa has The River — consistent, crafted, confident.

Tanzania deserves a seat at that table too. But first, we need to stop eating our scripts for breakfast.

Even the Film Board must wake up and step out from behind its paperwork. Don’t just police creativity — mentor it.

Host workshops. Bring in cinematographers from Cape Town, script doctors from Lagos, even a Bollywood lighting guy who can make an entire wedding glow with one bulb and three mirrors.

And please, stop arresting props makers for fake guns. No one’s plotting a coup; they’re shooting a scene. Realism isn’t rebellion; it’s professionalism.

Film is more than entertainment. It’s tourism, education, diplomacy and national pride, all rolled into one reel.

A single masterpiece about Lake Tanganyika could attract more visitors than ten glossy brochures.

A biopic on Mwalimu Nyerere could teach civics better than any textbook.

A binge-worthy series on the Tanganyika-Zanzibar union could make young Tanzanians fall in love with their own history.

Done right, cinema doesn’t preach, it inspires.

Imagine Bagamoyo reborn as Bongowood Film City, studios buzzing, dormitories full of dreamers who speak both Swahili and Dolby Digital.

Imagine co-productions linking Dar with Nairobi, Arusha with Lagos — creativity crossing borders like a VIP who doesn’t need a visa.

But for that dream to roll, attitudes must shift.

Filmmakers must stop treating deadlines like rumours and sound checks like optional fasting.

Audiences, too, must toughen up: Demand clean audio, logical plots and proper endings.

Because if we keep applauding mediocrity, mediocrity will keep taking encore bows. Constructive criticism isn’t cruelty; it’s patriotism with punctuation.

Still, even with all its rough edges and recycled scripts, the industry deserves applause.

Against shoestring budgets and rain leaking through rooftops, Tanzanian filmmakers keep shouting “Action!” in the middle of traffic.

That’s not disorder. That’s devotion. That’s grit with a script.

So, the next time you see a film crew blocking the road near Kinondoni, don’t honk. Smile. Hand them a bottle of water.

They’re not shooting another melodrama. They’re filming hope.

Hope that one day, Bongowood will stand proudly beside Bollywood and Nollywood — loud, colourful, unapologetically chaotic and gloriously its own.