Papa's Shadow: A Hemingway Film by Ramble Pictures LLC

A 2014 graduate of St. Olaf College, Jimmy Gildea has embarked on a career in filmmaking. After several years of hard work, he has produced Papa's Shadow, his first film (2015 Ramble Pictures, LLC). He is already working on his next one, "A Place Called Nowhere," about refugees at Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya.

Since, alongside Patrick Hemingway, the only surviving child of Ernest Hemingway, I feature prominently in Papa's Shadow, I will let others comment on it. However, the film comes with the following description:

FEATURING AN EXCLUSIVE TESTIMONY GRANTED BY HIS SON, PATRICK HEMINGWAY, PAPA'S SHADOW DIVES HEAD FIRST INTO AUTHOR ERNEST HEMINGWAY'S HUNTING EXPEDITIONS IN EAST AFRICA AND THEIR DEFINING ROLE IN SHAPING A LEGEND.

YOUNG FILMMAKER JIMMY GILDEA DOCUMENTS HIS EXPERIENCE WHILE STUDYING HEMINGWAY UNDER THE INSTRUCTION OF AFRICAN AUTHOR JOSEPH MBELE, JOURNEYING ACROSS MIDWEST AMERICA, THROUGH THE SERENGETI PLAIN AND UP THE STEEP CLIFFS OF MT. KILIMANJARO.

HEMINGWAY'S SON PATRICK AND MBELE ENGAGE IN AN INSPIRATIONAL AND REVEALING CONVERSATION REGARDING THE FAMOUS AUTHOR'S FASCINATING RELATIONSHIP WITH EAST AFRICA.

THIS PERSONAL AND EMOTIONAL FILM EXPOSES MANY ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS HEMINGWAY FANS HAVE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR.

Jimmy and I have been in constant communication from the time he enrolled in my Hemingway in East Africa course, several years ago. We took the photo featured here on April 21, 2015, when he visited me at St. Olaf College to talk about Papa's Shadow.

Jim says that these films will be premiered at festivals in America throughout the year. Eventually, they will be available for purchase. I will keep readers of this blog posted on these developments.

A Chance Encounter at Mto wa Mbu, Tanzania, With "Oswego Going Global"

In mid January, 2013, I was at Mto wa Mbu, a small town in northern Tanzania. I was with 29 students from St. Olaf College, on an interim course titled "Hemingway in East Africa."

We spent several days at Mto wa Mbu, which Hemingway describes in his Green Hills of Africa.

On one of those days, I came across Protus Mayunga, a man I had not known before. We had a great conversation. It turned out that we had significant common interests, in fields such as cultural tourism.

He was there with a group of students from the State University of New York, Oswego, and their professor, Dr. Mehran Nojan. Protus who founded and runs a small tour company called The Roof of Africa Adventures, was in charge of the logistics of the group's travel, helping with cultural and other forms of orientation for them. You can see Protus at the far right in the photo.

In the morning, I went and met them at their hotel. I learned that they were in a program called Oswego Going Global. It is a program of travel and learning, which takes students to various parts of the world. In Tanzania, their experiences included climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, visiting the national parks, such as the fabled Serengeti, and getting acquainted with the local people.

I thought it was a great program and was impressed by the enthusiasm and resilience of the participants as they went through diferent places, some quite challenging. When we first met, Protus learned that I had written a book, Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences. He obtained the several copies that I had with me and that evening he shared them with his group. Apparently, they enjoyed reading it.

Writing About My Country

For about two weeks now, the idea of writing about my country has been foremost in my mind. How did it all start?

Certainly, Lonely Planet has something to do with it. I have been thinking about Lonely Planet perhaps more than at any time in the past, how its writers bring the remotest corners of the world into our lives. Lonely Planet has seen places I have not seen, and might never see, even in my own country.

Before Lonely Planet, however, there was Ernest Hemingway, one of the most gifted writers of all time. For me as an African, Hemingway is precious. His Green Hills of Africa described my country in ways hard to match, let alone surpass. His description of the land, the people, and the animals rings true on every page, as I noted in a previous post. He wrought the same magic, if not more, in his other African stories, including Under Kilimanjaro, published post-humously.

The desire to write about my country owes much also to Derek Walcott, the celebrated Caribbean poet and playwright, a Nobel Laureate like Hemingway, whose works I have read and taught for a number of years. These last two weeks, my thoughts have dwelt on Walcott squarely. What he says concerning his decision to write about his country is unforgettable. Growing up reading English poets, who celebrated, nay sanctified, their native land and its vegetation, such as the oak and the elm trees, the roses and the daffodils, he believed that English trees and flowers were the only ones worth writing about in poems.

He underwent a conversion later, wondering why the coconut and mango trees of his native Caribbean were deemed inferior to the elm and apple trees of England. He decided to strike in this new direction, writing about the coconut and mango trees, sanctifying them through poetry. In his poems and plays, he writes about his people: the fishermen, the fruit vendors, the workers in the tourist resorts. He brings the Caribbean to life, its complexity of colours and shapes, its ups and downs, its pains and hopes.

I think about my village and my home region, up in the mountains east of Lake Nyasa, and I think about Tanzania, my country. The dream of writing about it looms large on the horizon. I am not a poet, but working hard, I should manage to write some decent prose.