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DVD White Shadow
 Run time: 117 min Rating: 6.6 Genres: Drama Director: Noaz Deshe Writers: Noaz Deshe, James Masson Stars: Hamisi Bazili, Salum Abdallah, Riziki Ally |
| Storyline The story of Alias, a young Albino on the run, hunted by local witch doctors who use Albinos body parts for their potions. |
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| Plot Keywords: tanzania | |
| Details: Country: Tanzania, Germany, Italy Release Date: 6 November 2014 (Germany) |
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DVD White Shadow
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2 comments
This film really blew me away. I saw it recently at the SF Film Festival. The camera work and editing style was both linear and non-linear, which I found totally engrossing and it made me realize how RAW everything about this film is. From the obvious difficulties and complexities of just shooting it, to creating the feeling of "fly on the wall documentary" of a village & culture, and then unfolding a story about a real boy who is in a living hell. I was both paralyzed and traumatized in the experience of watching it. I imagine the director used small hand-held cameras as there was auto focus & exposure,cool angles from the floor, etc. Some very beautiful and arresting imagery punctuated the overall manic texture of this film. The performances the director got from these real people was astonishing.Finally, the sound design and music completed the experience and it is etched in my mind. A stunning and unique achievement. Thank you to the director and for the producers who took a chance.I hope and pray change comes for these people who live as they do.
The concept of the film is an interesting one, the story of an albino in Africa, facing dangers somewhere where albinos are killed because their body parts are considered to have magical properties. As a premise, I do find that quite interesting.
However, the style of the film-making really rubbed me the wrong way. Rather than one linear story, the film seems to jump around in time a little bit, and I simply don't understand what time points I'm looking at and where, and it just doesn't make sense to me. Without being able to follow it, I just ended up lost, and I didn't feel like the characters were particularly fleshed out, something not aided particularly much by character evolution being difficult for me to spot as scenes jumped around a bit.
I was a bit let down by this as I don't think it conveyed a strong story.