Award winning filmmaker Shemu Joyah has said his short film Strike A Blow and Die, which tells the story of one of the country’s freedom fighters, Reverend John Chilembwe, will soon be on iPlus streaming platform.
He said the development had come about due to public demand, with some movie lovers wanting to watch the short film, which recently earned a nomination in the Africa Movie Academy Awards (Amaa) whose grand finale will be held next month in Nigeria.
“We will announce the exact date within this coming week,” Joyah wrote on his Facebook page. Meanwhile, Joyah has also said people can for now enjoy the behind[1]the-scenes content for the production the Nyungwe scene at Zalewa.
“We will release the behind-the-scenes content at Mandala this coming weekend,” he said.
Strike A Blow and Die is a rough cut where Joyah only took two scenes off the yet-to-be-produced Chilembwe feature film and runs for less than 15 minutes.
Recently, the veteran filmmaker told Arts & Culture that the current budget for the full Chilembwe feature film is $3.5 million (approximately K6 billion).
He indicated that FirstDawn Arts was working with three budgets for the film curated in US dollars.
“If we are going to do it the way we want it done, S$3.5 million is the first budget at the current rate. “This is a lot of money but to those who understand filmmaking, this is nothing,” the veteran filmmaker said. He said they were also looking at how the budget could be trimmed to $2 million.
“We might also be able to do it with $1.5 million. The thing is we do not want to compromise on quality,” Joyah said.
Joyah also said earning a nomination with the short film is testimony of the good work they are capable of doing.
This is not the first time for Joyah to be nominated for Amaa awards as he has, in past editions, also received several nominations with his other films.
The short film, produced with funding from Copyright Society of Malawi through the Copyright Fund, has two scenes of young John Chilembwe in 1891.
