By Thomas Chidamba
The life of artisanal miners is one complicated, full of ups and down, twists and turns, but a local production house, Dogsout Pictures, will soon produce a feature film highlighting the process of gold panning in Zimbabwe, ZiMining can exclusively reveal.
The film is about how a bright young person slowly degenerate into a murderous gold panner who preys on fellow miners to find his fortune.
Dogsout Pictures Director Manyara Mabhande confirmed to ZiMining in an exclusive interview that they are working on a feature film on artisanal miners and it will soon hit the big screen.
Manyara said the motive behind the film was to trace the lives of artisanal miners and bring out challenges they face during the course of their gold panning work.
“We are currently working on a film for makorokoza that we think if all goes according to plan, it will be out soon.
“The craft issue is to do with artisanal mining. We want to highlight the process of gold panning from the start to finish.
“Also, the film will highlight the life of a gold panner in his field. Generally, we want to bring out how moral degeneration of a bright young person earns him a life in hell on earth,” .
– Manyara said
He said that the story will show how corruption and greedy drives young people into gold panning and end up doing evil things like killing each other for money.
“It’s about the slow and steady corruption that leads one innocent young man to become evil.
“This young man, who was bright at school and is a holder of a degree, because of unemployment joins his uncle in the mining business.
“The young man is introduced to the gold fever when his uncle sends him to South Africa to buy mercury for gold trapping.
“This young man was lured into artisanal mining by large amounts of money he saw gold panners having. So when things go wrong he is forced to defend himself using a machete and killing his attacker.
“That is how he unwittingly breaks bad and becomes evil and ends joining a crew that terrorises other gold panners known as mashurugwi,”
– Manyara said.
Dogsout pictures have produced some blockbuster feature films that were screen across the globe.
One such film is, One Kind thing that was shown in Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya.
One Kind thing is a film about a selfishness HIV man who insists of having unprotected sex with his HIV negative wife.
The man trusts that he will be negative once he used anointing oil given to him by the prophet from his church.
His latest feature film Maroro: The Rise of the Great Quiet is expected to show at a Norwegian film festival.
Maroro is a feature film about the birth of fear and how it corrupted mankind.
