Documentary (18.10.06)

"Swahilini"

A documentary movie by Pierre Klochendler

Daddy Maisha is a young Congolese street musician stranded in Dar es Salaam's largest squatter camp. Manzese has the raw grey face of salvaged scrap where nothing is lost, nothing created, dangerous.

SWAHILINI follows the fortunes of Daddy, songster on a tin-roof, repository of the culture of the dispossessed, coryphaeus of those who own nothing, who envy those who have almost nothing. SWAHILINI also tells the improbable encounter between Daddy and Pierre, the ‘White Outsider’ and film-maker, and their friendship born out of mutual trust – both moral and practical: a first film for a first album.

"Swahilini", directed by Pierre Klochendler,
52min., Kiswahili/French/Lingala, English subtitles, Tanzania/France 2005

SWAHILINI is both musical and social testament to the sad glory of the human condition trapped below 'poverty line'; through Daddy's daily life and of his music, it is also testament to the simplicity of living Lumpen poverty, in accordance with the Kiswahili saying "the poor man's wealth is in the strength of his own labor.

SWAHILINI is a world of double negation: what the people of Manzese lack is no more than a measure of what they need. This is a place where misery and poverty are in constant struggle, where the poor seek to outlast misery. At once personal and general, at once fictitious and realistic, Swahilini is a multi-voiced reflection on the practical conditions which define what it means to survive, to sustain body and soul, on less than a dollar a day: water and food, the lust for money and the money of love, friends, family, roots, memories, a futureless future, the confrontation with the stranger in their midst, with the 'White world' beyond.

SWAHILINI offers an intimate encounter with Africa-of-the-disinherited, a sentimental and a movingly lyrical look at the dreams of men and women who are only what they have, who live for having, and not for being. The low-budget film was shot entirely in Dar es Salaam with the help of the residents of Manzese.

SWAHILINI is a 52-minute film including the musical score of Daddy Maisha, “Fleur Rose”.