The short film Come Walk With Me is part (unintentional) travelogue and part unabashed corrective. Its makers, the African-based Sinamatella Productions, describe it as a visual poem, and though that term long ago entered the realm of cliché, it’s an apt description in this case. The stream of images – from painterly skies to children playing, from bread being made to assorted snippets of graceful athleticism – is accompanied by a narrated poem that is transcribed in English subtitles. Every line trips a new image. The poem is rudimentary but gets the job done as a connective thread. The real point is the images, culled from across Africa: Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and South Africa. Walk reminds the viewer of a very basic fact that many in America and Europe continually fail to grasp – Africa is a continent, not a country – while making clear that the realities of the continent include countless manifestations of beauty across nature, cultures, and bodies.
Iza uHambe Nam // Come Walk With Me from Sinamatella Productions on Vimeo.
