A funny thing happened on the way through the post-screening Q&A for the Zulu Summer, an altogether sweet, quirky, and uplifting documentary that had its world premiere yesterday afternoon at the Lobero Theatre. SBIFF programmer Audrey Arn was leading an interview with directors Joseph Litzinger and Eric Michael Schrader, and community radio DJ Dark Sevier.
Suddenly, a fourth member of the project magically appeared when Mokai — one of the three lead characters in this story of South African Zulus who came to Butte Montana for a summer — showed up in Schrader’s hand, via FaceTime. He was soaking up the triumphant ambience of the film’s world premiere, all the way from home in Nongoma, South Africa. The crowd went wild and shared in Arn’s startled delight, saying, “I’ve never seen that happen.” Mokai spoke to the crowd and had them utter a couple of Zulu words, but the main takeaways were both an extension of the film’s theme of transcultural compassion and interest, and an illustration of the capacity for surprise in the festival experience.
Zulu Summer, edited down to a tidy 78-minutes from a reported 10 terrabytes of footage, traces the unusual tale of a Zulu prince and two friends from Nongoma who initiated a cultural exchange with the small, beautiful town of Butte (pop. 34,000), through the unlikely introduction to America through its radio station KBMF. What seems like a head-scratcher of a human-interest story appears to be one of the most inspiring and conflict-free films on the 2019 SBIFF program, in which the kindly people of Butte fully embrace these African visitors, whose own positive outlook and experience-ready senses are infectious.
