Tsitsi Dangarembga

Film Producer/Writer

A pioneering female artist in the area of filmmaking, playwriting and authoring novels, Tsitsi Dangarembga was born in 1959 in Mutoko.

Her debut novel, Nervous Conditions (1988), which was the first to be published in English by a Black woman from Zimbabwe, was named by the BBC in 2018 as one of the top 100 books that have shaped the world. In 2020, her novel This Mournable Body was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

In 1989, Dangarembga went to Germany to study film production inclusive of directing at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin. She produced several films while in Berlin, including a documentary aired on German television.

In 1992, she founded Nyerai Films, a production company based in Harare. She wrote the story for the 1993 film Neria, which became the highest-grossing film in Zimbabwean history. Her 1996 film Everyone’s Child, the first feature film directed by a black Zimbabwean woman, was shown internationally, including at the Dublin International Film Festival.

In 2002, she founded the International Images Film Festival. Her 2005 film Kare Kare Zvako won the Short Film Award and Golden Dhow at the Zanzibar International Film Festival, and the African Short Film Award at the Milan Film Festival. Her 2006 film Peretera Maneta received the UNESCO Children’s and Human Rights Award and won the Zanzibar International Film Festival. She is the executive director of the organization Women Filmmakers of Zimbabwe and the founding director of the Women’s Film Festival Trust.

Over the years Tsitsi produced more than 20 films inclusive of the following productions, High Hopes, At the Water, Peretera Maneta, I Want a Wedding Dress amongst many others.

While studying Psychology at the University of Zimbabwe, she joined the university drama club and wrote and directed several of the plays the group performed. She also became involved with the theatre group Zambuko, during which she participated in the production of two plays, Katshaa and Mavambo.

Tsitsi remains inspirational to many filmmakers, particularly of the womenfolk. She ventured into filmmaking when the industry was overly dominated by men.

Her experience in racial discrimination and white supremacy that she experienced in the United Kingdom shaped her determination in breaking male domination in the art of film making. Internationally and locally, the Zimbabwean literary arts can never be navigated without encountering the name Tsitsi Dangarembga.

Her literary works remain iconic and very influential to many young female writers. She ably demonstrates her prowess as a novelist as well as a playwright is evidenced by the following works, She No Longer Weeps, Lost of the Soil, all plays of immense reputation amongst others and iconic novels like Nervous Conditions and The Mournable Body, just as examples.—NACZ.