Movie: Slave Warrior

I remember when I learnt about Oliver Mbamara’s up coming movie, slave warrior a couple of months ago. I was a bit wary of watching this attempt, considering the weird “action” flicks that I have seen coming out of Nollywood. But Slave Warrior was a pleasant surprise.

The screening of this movie took place in a theater that did not have the best of sounds, so a lot of words were muffled but the clarity/sharpness of the images, including the swift translation of Ibo to English, ensured that the audience was transfixed to their seats. Not one person within the mixed race audience got up to go anywhere till that 2 hour long movie was over.

Slave warrior is an Epic, Adventure, love story set in the 18th century during slave trade. It tells the story of how a young Ibo boy gets transported into the past where he becomes a warrior and a captive. For those who have read the book,”things fall apart” by Chinua Achebe, there is a strong similarity between his writings and this movie. One gets a sense of stepping through a time zone into a culture that predates the Ibo’s as one gets to see how community decisions were made and gets to juxtapose the slavery system that existed within this culture.

One of the main ideas that runs through the movie is that no one is innocent. The movie paints an objective picture of the happenings during slave trade as well as the culpability of several Africans that participated on the side of the captors by selling human flesh across the ocean.

I will like to argue that because Slavery existed before the overseas captors set foot on the continent, it was very easy for some Africans to fall into the continuation of that system but Oliver Mbamara* has an alternative view point to offer within this film. He believes that Slavery within African context was more humane than what eventually occurred . In his movie he shows two sides of slavery within the Ibo culture: slaves being treated as part of a family as well as slaves being used in exchange for free born who had committed a crime. He also uses his movie to show that as much as many Africans will like to believe that Africa was very peaceful before the “Slave trade”, the reverse was true. Wars existed in Africa, people were killed and Flesh was sold or exchanged, and people committed crimes often of passion.

This movie took about two years to create and for those who are interested in African History or action movies of any type or just a simple love story; this is a must watch and an addition to any collectors library.

To get more information: please go to, www.slavewarrior.com

*Oliver Mbamara is a Nigerian playwright, author, poet and judge based in New York.

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