Wilson Chipangura, Guest Reporter
A certain Strange Tea has taken Zimbabwe by surprise in recent days thanks to BGE Zim Movies.
The latest offering by the ever-growing but unique creative hub has sent all film lovers into a frenzy online.
Strange Tea — a short Zimbabwean film focuses on the concept of rapture and the return of Jesus Christ during the last days which will signal the end of the world.
It begins with Pastor Strange (real name, Boanerges Chokuda) being offered a tea with a strange taste by his wife Geraldine Chokuda, which sets the scene of the film.
Pastor Strange immediately goes into hysteria while acquiring some supernatural powers to teleport.
It is probably the first of its kind in Zimbabwe with such advanced scene features. The cast for Strange Tea includes Boanerges Chokuda, Geraldine Chokuda, Prince Tapudzai, Innocent Tigere, Godknows Chinyama, Ngoni Hobwani among others.
Boanerges Chokuda, the founder of BGE Zim Movies and the man behind the Strange Tea concept opened up on the success of the project and the motive to spread the gospel through movies.
“Our latest project at the moment is called Strange Tea. This is a comedy filled film which was created to preach about the ending of the world and to show people that Jesus is the only way to heaven.
The talented Kariba-born filmmaker ventured into the creative sector in 2011 though he only started doing films professionally later in 2017.
The biggest projects he has presided over since then include “John Christian” (Zim superhero movie), “Light Race Life” (cgi vfx live action short film) and “Fighting for Elsey” (Zimbabwe short film).
“The challenges we have faced are mainly related to financial constraints. We do not have enough funds to produce our films as we want them to come out,” said Chokuda, currently based in Masvingo.
“I do visual effects work that needs a core i7 laptop using a dual core laptop because of shortage of funds.
“The other thing relates to convincing the personnel to pitch up for projects, for big projects people are more committed to do their personal hustles because we are not yet financially stable.
“The comforting thing is that we keep finding some committed people who are willing to do the film work for the glory of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour.
“Our team is huge, we have more than 100 actors in our database who are willing to work with us all across Zimbabwe.
“Our future ambitions are to do feature films which are filled with visual effects and more of CGI (computer generated imagery) and spaceships and movies which are at par with the quality produced in Hollywood.
“Just like the way Marvel Studios created Avengers Endgame. Our ambition is to preach Jesus to the whole world through our movies,” he said.
