Stephen Chigorimbo

King Edward asks Sherlock Holmes to perform one more task before his retirement: to safeguard the Star of Africa on a trip to Cape Town. Soon the fabled jewel is stolen and several people end up being murdered.

This documentary shows how cinema has been used very differently in three neighbouring African countries with different colonial heritages: Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Madagascar. Mozambique used cinema newsreels as a crucial propaganda tool after the Portugese colonisers left. Madagascar boycotted US movies, so its screens were dominated by French, Indian and Hong Kong films instead. But a few films managed to get made. The situation in Zimbabwe was the worst, except that alone of the three countries it possessed an efficient film laboratory.

Based on the prize-winning novel by Dambudzo Marechera, on growing up black in white Rhodesia, and the exiled writer's return to the newly liberated Zimbabwe.