Under heavy security and an air of thick anticipation, as audience members mingled, took photographs, and chatted over the tops of their plush red seats, the National Theatre of Somalia flickered into life this week as it played host to the first film screening in the country for 30 years. The moment capped a period of reconstruction and renewal for Somalia, which still bears the scars of a long civil war.
The history of cinema in Somalia stretches back to the newsreels and propaganda films which were shown during the colonial period of Italian Somaliland. Shot by an Italian film crew in Somalia, and based on the buildup to the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, the propaganda work Sentinels of Bronze won a prize at the illustrious Venice Film Festival in 1937 for best Italian colonial film.
In 1960, the remnants of Italian Somaliland and British Somaliland united to form the Somali Republic, with a military coup in 1969 giving way to the Somali Democratic Republic in the form of a one-party socialist state. Cinema continued to flourish in an independent Somalia, driven by the riwaayado musicals with the odd historical documentary or epic drama based on the Dervish movement.
But by the late eighties, technological developments and internal strife saw some of the focus shift away from international film premieres towards the local television networks. And with the breakout of civil war in 1991, new film showings ground to a halt.
The Somali film industry has continued to thrive in pockets and spurts, particularly in diaspora communities, with Somaliwood birthing a new generation of action-oriented films out of its base in the Ohio capital of Columbus. But back in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, once home to so many cinema houses, the once thriving National Theatre has stood dormant.
Built by Chinese engineers and opened in 1967, the National Theatre of Somalia hosted famous bands like the Waaberi and served as a cultural landmark before being damaged during the early days of the civil war. Competing warlords used the bullet-strewn building as a base. A reopening ceremony in 2012 was broadcast on national television, but mere weeks later a suicide attack killed six people, including some of the country’s top sports officials.
After painstaking restoration efforts, once more backed by China while Somali filmmakers continue to be supported by international collaborators and regional grants, the National Theatre in Mogadishu was finally able to reopen. After paying the steep sum of $10 and passing through several security checkpoints, audience members were free to watch two short films by the local director IBrahim CM.
A horror story about a single woman who moves into an empty house and a dark romantic comedy, the star of the films Hoos and Date from Hell is the 24-year-old Kaif Jama. The screenwriter and actress said ‘This means something for everyone including me. This is for every Somali who wants to make movies’, adding ‘if our own movies come to cinema and TVs then every single Somali person and child will be shaped and influenced by their own culture’.
