First there was Hollywood. Then Bollywood. Now.... Tollywood?

I've always wanted to coin a phrase, so this is what I have christened the Tanzanian film industry. However, my experiences this weekend have left me somewhat disillusioned and doubtful as to the future of my career as a Tollywood Movie Star.

It turns out a friend of a friend of a friend is making a movie and he was looking for two Mzungu stars. Why not, I thought, it'd be a bit of a laugh, and by the sound of it i'd get the leading role and a trip to Dar es Salaam thrown in too. It would also give me the chance to practice my acting skills, having left my theatre group back in London and rueing the fact I am unable to take part in any of their current production.  I have to admit though that when I agreed to do the film I didn't really think it would happen. Most things here don't.

So when the script arrived I was a little surprised; not long after that surprise had changed to fits of laughter: hideously awful just isn't the word, and that's just the spelling! Let me summarise the plot.

Lisa comes to Tanzania to find her German expatriate father dying in bed. Rushed to hospital, his last words tell her of a map which shows where to find his hidden treasure (therein lying the title of the movie, "Hidden Treasure"). Lisa uses this map and the help of a friendly taxi driver, Mkumbo, to find this treasure. However Mkumbo double-crosses her and has her arrested before running off with the loot. Six months later, Lisa is back to enact her revenge. She undergoes a facelift and, in her reincarnation as Bliss, seduces Mkumbo and marries him. She then hires a contract killer to finish him off, and as his widow gets away with all his (her) gold. The End.

I play Lisa.

A few meetings with the director and it looked like I wouldn't afterall get a flight to Dar. I wouldn't even get paid in fact. Just a 10-hour bus ride and the promise of my face on the poster. But still I didn't think it would ever happen, and so I agreed with it all. Nevertheless, late Friday evening he turned up at my house. He told me to be at the cafe at 8 o'clock the following morning. He gave very sketchy answers to my questions, but I gathered I was to bring a selection of clothes with me, the script, and not much else.

So I packed a couple of skirts, trousers, tops etc. but nothing else (not really expecting to be involved in such pursuits, I barely have a hairbrush with me, let alone any makeup!). I was dutifully there at 8.am.....

And then we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

At 10 o'clock we set off in a hired minibus for Kilimanjaro Airport where the first scene was to be shot. It was a slow journey, hampered by the fact that the police stopped us and arrested the driver for not having a license... Upon arrival, it took an hour or so for us to get permission to film there (could this have been done in advance?) but then we finally started. It turned out however that the script was merely "guidelines", to the extent that I could in fact have thrown the script in the bin and (i) no-one would care (ii) no-one would know (the director doesn't actually have his own copy) and (iii) it would be better anyway because its so badly written! Indeed, many scenes didn't have any dialogue in them at all, merely a bullet-point list of what was supposed to happen. The actors merely made up the dialogue as we went along. Literally, ad-libbing entire scenes. The problem with that, however, is that when you do each take (for close-ups, different angles etc) it is impossible to remember exactly what you said last time!

The other problem with ad-libbing with other actors who speak little English and with little confidence, is that they are simply unable to do so. The conversations are therefore littered with long pauses whilst my co-star worked out what I had said, and then worked out how to answer it. Despite me trying my best to say the same thing each take, he was still unable to do me the same courtesy back!

Our Winnebago and the cameraman 

In addition to the concept of rehearsal (why on earth would you bother rehearsing any of the scenes, largely because the director himself just doesn't know what he wants the actors to do), the other concept that the crew had never heard of was that of continuity. After bearing their amused chuckling the first few times I tried to remember which side i'd been standing on, or whether my sunglasses were on my head or in my hand, I realised they didn't actually care. There may therefore be a few entirely intended bloopers that I threw in, just to spite the hours of my time already wasted!

The director himself didn't have a clue about, well, anything really! Nearly all of the scenes he asked me what i thought I should do, or what i should say. A conversation would go like "Cut. Sorry, we've actually changed the lines in this scene. Forgot to tell you. The file is no longer hidden in a safe. Where do you think it should be hidden?"....

Glamourous filmstar lifestyle... 

Having finally finished the 2 minute scene (which took over an hour) we set off for the next destination, a bus stop. After an hour of arguing however, it turned out we couldn't use the chosen site and had to find somewhere else. We then decided to do a hotel scene but guess what - the hotel wasn't expecting us and threw us off the premises!

We then found another bus stand for the scene originally scheduled and our call for extras was met with a huge surge of the young men who generally hang around bus stops here with nothing else to do all day. So we drove a little way down the road, me and a bus full of random men, turned round and drove back past the camera. "CUUTTT" shouted the director, and then "All you passengers - DON'T LOOK AT THE CAMERA"!! As we'd driven past the film-crew, every single one of the extras had been staring out the window at the camera!!

On location

The next scene involved a man snatching my bag. Cue a fist-fight between the extras as to who would get to play the thief. A suitably ruffian-esque man having been chosen, we set the scene and did the first take. I admit my heart skipped a beat when, having ran off round the corner as directed, it was a good 5 minutes before man returned with my bag and all its contents (note, this being my actual bag; no props or costumes or items of any sort whatsoever having been provided by the director!).

It was by now 7 in the evening and the novelty of waiting around had long worn off. We'd shot a grand total of two scenes, lasting a couple of minutes each, but the day was not yet done. We headed back into town in order to film a scene in a "village house". I was taken along a few winding pathways and entered a house, where I was told to wait. Apparently the location we wanted to use was just around the corner and they needed to get the food prepared (the scene being an evening meal). So there I was left, since all the other crew and actors wandered off. In a stranger's house, waiting.

And waiting. And waiting. Two hours later, i'd fallen asleep on her couch, the power had cut out, and finally one of the other actors came back to check on me. By this point I was beyond persuasion and, in any event, the lack of power meant we couldn't go ahead with the filming anyway (not that we could have done because, you've guessed it, the owners of the house weren't expecting us and wouldn't let us in there to film...).

I demanded to be taken home, and this request was eventually complied with, although the one for some food was not. So I wandered in at about 10 pm, 15 hours after having left that morning, having shot a total of two scenes!

Unfortunately those two scenes kind of commit me to the film, but I have a feeling that when the "face lift" bit happens, i'll gently request they find an entirely different actress to do the job!