Bristol film-makers celebrate African identity

Leaving your home for a distant land, in this case Bristol, is difficult enough even in the best of circumstances.

But when you've been forced out – and imprisoned and threatened with torture to ram home the message – it's all the harder, especially when you then have to re-establish your successful and high profile career in a new country.

In many ways, however, Ingrid Sinclair and Simon Bright are far luckier than many of their Zimbabwean compatriates. At least they had a home to come to.

Ingrid, a documentary director, grew up in Weston-super-Mare before spending 18 years in Zimbabwe, where she met and married Simon, an independent film producer who was born in Zimbabwe.

That family history made the South West the obvious choice when the couple and their children – Leila, now aged 22, and Tom, 18 – were forced to leave Zimbabwe four years ago.

The couple feel "incredibly lucky" to have settled so happily in Bristol and to have been welcomed into the city's African community. Proof of how quickly they've become established as part of the city's arts scene is their Afrika Eye film festival, which opens on Friday, and which they set up three years ago as a link with home.

Even so, adjusting to Britain's very different climate and culture was a shock, admits Simon. "I found it incredibly alienating at first and everything was very difficult. You go to a train station and someone says 'go to platform six' – you don't even know where to start looking for platform six," he chuckles.

"You don't even know what time you can ring people up. In Africa, you know that if you want something done, you phone at 7am."

Even more difficult was the problem of establishing themselves as film makers in the UK after two decades as high profile members of Zimbabwe's film community.

Ingrid and Simon were two of Zimbabwe's leading independent film makers and their company, Zimmedia, won many international awards for its work, both fiction and documentary.

However, as the Zimbabwean regime grew more hostile and repressive, they found it increasingly hard to operate.

Then in 2003, a film which Ingrid made, called Give Us Peace, left the couple in a very difficult position with the authorities.

"It's about violence and how a government should treat its people," says Ingrid, over cups of tea at the couple's home in Cotham, Bristol. "It's actually done through dance but we also had footage of real violence."

At that time, film makers had to apply to the government for permission to make films. "They said 'no' but I decided to make it anyway," says Ingrid.

The couple found themselves being blackmailed by people who knew they'd made the film. They'd already come into conflict with the government over an earlier film, Flame, about a woman solider in the war of liberation.

Eventually, they decided Zimbabwe was too difficult for film makers such as themselves, and reluctantly left for Bristol.

But Simon had unfinished work in Zimbabwe and when he went back to do it, he was arrested and thrown in jail.

"I was in a cell designed for six people that had 26 people in it. You had to have plastic bags on your feet to wade to the toilet," he recalls.

He was interrogated several times and threatened with electric shock treatment in an attempt to make him admit to having helped the BBC make a documentary exposing systematic rape in the ruling party's youth training camps (he hadn't).

Luckily, Simon's "very brave" lawyer Beatrice Mtetwe got him out of jail and after keeping him under surveillance for two weeks, the authorities let him leave.

This wasn't the first time Simon had found himself at odds with Zimbabwe's ruling elite. He grew up on a farm and his parents were opposed to the "police state" created by the white minority rule prime minister Ian Smith.

"I used to be called a communist at school," he recalls. He had also fled Zimbabwe (or Rhodesia as it was then called) once before – as a draft dodger, avoiding a call up to the Rhodesian army.

Simon returned home after Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980 and Robert Mugabe was elected as prime minister. It was a time of hope and optimism.

"We were building a new non-racial society, production improved by 400 per cent and very soon Zimbabwe was a food exporting country and its industry was booming. It was a really happy place," recalls Simon. Today, Zimbabwe is far from a happy place. Its people are starving, its economy has collapsed and inflation runs at a staggering 11 million per cent.

Ingrid is "relieved" they no longer have to deal with Zimbabwe's repressive regime but Simon admits to feeling guilty about having left: "There is a sense that my country is going downhill and I should be there doing something about it."

He channels his frustration into being an active member of Bristol's Zimbabwe Association and says the city's vibrant African communities have been very welcoming.

In 2006 he and Ingrid set up the Afrika Eye film festival, a celebration of African music and film running this weekend at the Watershed. This year's festival includes two premieres – Youssou N'dour's documentary Return to Goree in which the Senegalese singer follows the trail left by slaves and the jazz music they invented, and the Sundance-nominated Son of Man from South Africa, in which the Gospels are retold as a tale of corruption and redemption in contemporary Africa.

Organising the festival is hard work but it's also "a joyous affair", says Ingrid: "You wake up sweating at 3am but it's also an opportunity to create wonderful things."

Simon agrees: "It's one way of celebrating our African identity and at a very simple level it's also about building a market for future African film producers."

Afrika Eye opens this Friday at 8 pm at the Watershed, Bristol.