Bristol-based exiled Zimbabwean film maker Simon Bright’s powerful documentary on Robert Mugabe – Robert Mugabe. .. What Happened? – is being screened this week at the Watershed following its sell-out premiere at Bristol’s recent Afrika Eye film festival.
The documentary, filmed undercover in Zimbabwe, challenges conventional wisdom about Mugabe and South Africa. The mad dictator we see on TV today was the principled fighter against apartheid and Rhodesian domination, the darling of the West received by queens, prime ministers and presidents.
Robert Mugabe… What Happened? explores what happened through interviews with some of Mugabe’s closest comrades and a unique collection of Southern African archive that powerfully evokes his reign. The film charts Mugabe’s Shakespearean rise and fall, his building of a successful African country and then his destroying of it.
The film has gone on to international success including sell-out screenings in Capetown, Durban and Johannesburg, at its European premiere at IDFA and at its London premiere at the LSE. It is also to be screened for the European Parliament and is now eligible for a BAFTA.
Simon Bright said: “The turbulent history of Zimbabwe is a fascinating political thriller but a tragic one.
“I wanted to capture the drama of Mugabe from his origins as a poor peasant to his brilliant successes, his role in changing Southern Africa. Then I wanted to go beyond his turning point to where Zimbabwe is today. While Mugabe promulgates the story that this is a black and white conflict, I show how whites did fight for black rule and how Mugabe’s attack on whites is a tactic to trash the black opposition.”
Simon witnessed this tragedy firsthand. A supporter of Mugabe in the 1980s, he helped rebuild the new Zimbabwe working in the Ministry of Agriculture. Later imprisoned by the Mugabe regime in 2004, he has since been living in exile in Bristol, but returned undercover in 2009 and 2010 to film Robert Mugabe….What Happened?
Morgan Mutasa, Bristol’s chairman of the Movement for Democratic Change, the rival party to ZANU PF, said: “The film is very well researched and the events shown are all accurate and true.”
