Jah Prayzah movie set to premiere
By Dakarai Mashava
The Purse, a Christian movie featuring music star Jah Prayzah, will premiere at Ster Kinekor Eastgate on Thursday.
Serial award-winner Jah Prayzah acts as a spiritual warrior in the movie about a young lady Maria (played by Rachael Maketa) who enters the spiritual realm during a fervent prayer.
She meets an angel who tells her about a spiritual war that is about to be unleashed on her family. The angel tells Maria to escape to a place where she will get the power to leave the spiritual realm and revert back to being a normal person.
Along the way to the physical world, Maria endures various evil duels until she meets the spiritual warrior (Jah Prayzah) who helps her return to the normal world.
The Purse is the first full-length film by 2013 National Arts Merit Award (Nama) music video director of the year Willard “Slimaz” Magombedze who directed Jah Prayzah’s videos for the hits Jerusarema, Tsviriyo and Kumbumura Mhute.
Slimaz told the Daily News that venturing away from “the comfort zone of music videos” had been an exciting challenge.
“Until now I have been doing music videos and as such this film, which is one hour 18 minutes long, presented a welcome challenge.
“This is the first epic Christian movie to be done in Zimbabwe and I am happy because the quality is international standard,” he said.
According to Slimaz, the movie which was funded by Slimaz Pro and Jah Prayzah’s JP Studios and was filmed in Vumba, Domboshava and Harare, featured a number of established actors and personalities.
“There is Tendai Mukariri who played as Museve in Tiriparwendo, Samantha Kureya who plays the role of Gonyeti (the comic pastor’s wife) in the Bus Stop TV comic skits, Alpha Ngoni and Amina Chivasa who was the main character in Detective Chanaiwa’s Simbimbino,” said the award-winning music video director.
Though he is happy with the standard of his first full-length movie, Slimaz conceded that with more funding the movie would have come out even better.
“The challenges are the same for every Zimbabwean film producer-funding is not enough yet international standards demand high budgets,” he said.
Slimaz is already planning for the next movie.
“After the premiere, we will audition for another movie while this one (The Purse) goes to television stations. We need to feed the market with Zimbabwean productions.
“I intend to release at least a single movie a year and where possible even two,” he said. Daily News
