Prominent Zimbabwean filmmaker Rumbi Katedza has described working with talk show queen Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry on a documentary on mental health as an eye opener.
Katedza (RK), who worked with Oprah and Prince Harry on the production Friendship Bench, The Me You Cannot See, told Alpha Media Holdings chairman Trevor Ncube (TN) on the platform In Conversation with Trevor that the production was a learning process for her.
Below are excerpts from the interview.
TN: Rumbi Katedza, welcome to In Conversation With Trevor.
RK: Thank you for having me. I am so excited to be here.
TN: I am excited because in our sitting at home, and watching your segment on Friendship Bench, The Me You Cannot See, and I was like wow, so beautiful to watch lovely work produced by a Zimbabwean on an international platform.
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Talk to me about how this project in 2021, came about?
RK: You know Trevor in 2020 people were going through a very difficult time and not understanding where the world was going.
Executive producers, Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry looked into a project that really delved into mental health, and it was really amazing and wonderful that they also wanted to go outside of the US and look at how communities outside of the US were also dealing with mental health issues during that time.
Through a colleague, a producer that I had worked with in South Africa, I was connected to the producers of the project who said can you direct our segment in Zimbabwe?
They were already aware of the Friendship Bench, which was started by Dixon Chibanda, an incredible project where he looks at mental health issues.
I mean we are in a country where our health sector is in crisis, where we have less than 20 psychiatrists, and he created this project that goes into communities and uses grandmothers as counsellors.
These are people who I think in our communities anyway you go to your elderly, people who you respect...
TN: Sekurus, ambuyas?
RK: Yes. And that is a perfect kind of idea to then let people know that you can go to these people and talk about your struggles.
So, I was invited to direct the segment on the Friendship Bench, and it was an honour as well, because they said we want a Zimbabwean director to do it, and I said to the crew look guys this is a perfect opportunity for us to shine because it was Covid-19 nobody was coming in from outside, 100 Zimbabwean crew and we delivered.
And it was such a beautiful segment where they were looking at how people within certain communities can help each other when a crisis moment happens.
The gogos that we met were so generous with their time and their love and it was a learning moment for all of us as well. Cathartic.
TN: Beautiful. Well done. I mean if you are at home the episode is available on Apple TV Plus, I really recommend for you to watch it.
You are being humble; Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry, HARPO Productions? Talk to me about that?
RK: It is a machine. It is a machine like I had never worked with before, and really a learning process for me because usually when we work on productions in Zimbabwe the budgets are a lot smaller and you are just like putting things together, but there was a whole process of hierarchy and set protocols.
They were very strict about the welfare of the crew, and the people who we were also interacting with.
I love that, right from the executive producers, who would then speak to the producers who were supervising us, there were always these discussions that we would have with other section directors and segment directors.
Then there were the series directors, so you always felt like you were part of a process that was very important, without everybody's contributions this would not work. It was also nice to be able to work remotely.
So, the editor that I worked with was in New York while I was here, and we would discuss the content and he understood what we were doing on a story level and that is the universality of film isn't it?
TN: Yeah.
RK: Does the story work? And to be able to say let us make it work for an international audience, not just for a Zimbabwean audience but for an international audience.
So that was a great opportunity to, like, look at how do we now take Zimbabwean stories out. What are the best ways to edit and cut them together so that they flow.
TN: What were the learnings for you from this experience? Working for a global brand with kind of rigorous expectations?
What were the lessons for you that you would like to share with our viewers out there?
RK: It was really about trusting your process and trusting your vision and your art.
While it was a very rigorous process, and you know you had a lot of responsibilities to deliver by deadline and within certain like specifications, I also had a lot of freedom to create what I wanted to do.
I did not have to explain myself like I often do locally.
Like I am a director, this is the process of directing, I have to deliver and it is going to cost so much.
There were none of those conversations with them, all I spoke to them about were creative elements of making the film.
I said look I want to present the Friendship Bench, and I want to present Gogo Forget in a way that is respectful and beautiful, and I think I did just that.
TN: The other aspect that I think a lot of people find interesting is you say your budget was bigger than normal?
What is the advantage of that versus the normal that we used to?
Shoestring budget, but still be able to produce a good movie, a good documentary. In this instance you are given more than what you used to? Were there constraints? Were there opportunities? Talk to me about that bit.
RK: Well, opportunities were definitely in the equipment.
So, we were able to use a camera that we had not used before, the Sony Venice, that is a very high-end camera that our team worked with, and the camera team was Zimbabwean.
We had to go through the process of importing all of this really high-end equipment that reaches the specifications of Apple TV Plus, because it is an international broadcaster.
So, you cannot just shoot with your small DSLR. You know they were very specific, you can use this camera, that one or that one, that is all we will accept.
So working with that equipment and being able to also work within a time frame without thinking guys we may not be able to finish because we do not have money to be able to get to this place or that place.
If I said to the producers I need to shoot in these three places it would happen...
TN: It got done?
RK: As long as I could back up why I needed to do it then they were on board.
TN: What an ideal place to be?
RK: That is.
TN: Rumbi for the past 35 years you have been in this industry, so lots of experience behind you as a director, writer and producer.
Talk to me about, first of all, which one of those is your, you know, go to?
Which one do you absolutely like and enjoy? Which one is you? And the processes with which you approach each one of these? Directing, writing and producing?
RK: That is a very hard question you know. There is so much joy in all of them.
I think perhaps it is the directing aspect, because it is the storytelling, it is the ability to bring a team of creatives together and use each and every one of their abilities to make one product.
Film obviously as you know, is an amalgamation of every creative industry.
When you are making music, you do not necessarily need a filmmaker, when you are doing your visual art you do not necessarily need a filmmaker, but in making a film we take aspects of other creative industries you know.
Wardrobe, makeup, so on and so forth, even engineering and we bring all those together.
So, I love as a director taking what I think is people's strengths, honing it to improve my story.
Also, as directors you get a lot of credit in the end but it is a team effort, and there is so much beauty in being able to bring all those people together.
Whereas with producing, it is more the business side right, and I would like to see more of that, like the importance of producing and getting business in order in our industry in Zimbabwe, because you really have to think ahead because it is a product, right?
Film is a product.
People do not necessarily understand that it is a product with a value chain like any other business. So that to me is very interesting.
TN: Are you saying we do not get it in Zimbabwe at the moment?
That aspect of it?
RK: Correct. A lot of us do not understand the whole value chain of the film, so when you set out to make a film you should know what the end product is from the beginning.
Is it going to be something like a digital file that is going to be uploaded to the internet?
Or are you going to have a high-end DCP drive that you are going to send off to a festival somewhere?
Or are you making it because you want to sell it to Netflix, so that is a different kind of specification?
So know what your final product is so that you know how you will sell it.
That is what I mean about people not really thinking about the end-product.
TN: Did you have problems? I mean going back to the Apple series; The Me You Can’t See, The Friendship Bench? Did you have problems with talent?
I know you say you had to import some of the equipment, what about talent? Did you find it easy to look at that talent?
RK: Well because it was a documentary it was very straightforward, and we worked closely in partnership with Friendship Bench, and we were able to meet about a dozen of their grandmother counsellors, their gogos, and together with the producers we then narrowed it down to Gogo Forget, who we met and spent days with seeing what she does and going out to the community.
It was a difficult time because it was during Covid-19.
People were not sure where Covid-19 was taking us, and we wanted to be very careful because obviously we did not want her to get sick, or the people that we were working with to get sick.
That was another investment of the production team, they invested in having a healthcare professional on set, who not only saw to the crew’s welfare, but also saw to the welfare of the people who we came in contact with.
There was a day that we were at a well, the community got their water from this well, obviously they were congregating this was during Covid-19, and this healthcare professional did temperature checks, and checked in with these women who were there.
There was one woman who was not well and he was able to help her in that moment.
That to me was powerful.
That it was not just us there to tell a story, but also to give back in some way in the little time that we were there.
So, talent no was not difficult, because it was a documentary, but if it was fiction we’d be talking about another story Trevor.
“In Conversation With Trevor” is a weekly show broadcast on YouTube.com//InConversationWithTrevor. The conversations are broadcast to you by Heart and Soul Broadcasting Services. The conversations are sponsored by WestProp Holdings.