Baltimore audiences will get their first chance to see an Oscar-winning movie -- and will also meet a real-life heroine -- when Prudence Mabhena appears with "Music by Prudence" at the Maryland Film Festival. (That's Mabhena in a scene from the movie, left.)
Made partly with the financial and creative support of the Maryland Institute College of Art, this 33-minute film overcame a strong field of competitors to win best short documentary at the 2010 Academy Awards.
Festival director Jed Dietz confirmed yesterday that Mabhena is flying from Zimbabwe to Baltimore for the movie's premiere on May 7. "Music by Prudence" screens again on May 9 and will be shown on HBO May 12; Mabhena will do Q & A and sing at both MFF performances.
Few Oscar movies have packed in more profundity per minute. Mabhena was born with arthrogryposis, a debilitating condition that warps the body's joints. She found little help in Zimbabwe, where the disabled are presumed to have been cursed. Happily, she landed at the King George VI School & Centre for Children with Physical Disabilities in Bulawayo, where she found her voice, literally and figuratively.
"Music by Prudence" salutes Mabhena, 21, as a sublime singer and a courageous woman. It follows her and seven other young musicians in Zimbabwe who transcend, through art and fellowship, bigotry and isolation.
Mabhena will celebrate her victory at the place where the film received some crucial early support: MICA's Brown Center.
Patrick Wright, the film's coproducer and associate editor, is the chair of MICA's video and film arts department. He lent his own equipment, and some of MICA's, to Williams for a critical period of early shooting. Wright found seed money for the project, cut trailers to win long-term backing, enlisted students as interns and recommended, as a cinematographer, Errol Webber Jr., who graduated from MICA in 2008 and immediately went to work on the movie.
"This is amazing. Two years ago when I flew to Zimbabwe, I never imagined I would wind up here," said Roger Ross Williams, the film's producer-director, as he accepted his Oscar. When Williams' estranged producer, Elinor Burkett, interrupted him at the podium, he tried to salvage the public-relations disaster by saying "Prudence is here tonight." The TV cameras gave Oscar-watchers a brief glimpse of the movie's heroine, beaming in the audience.
At the Maryland Film Festival, the day will belong to Prudence. My bet is that she -- and "Music by Prudence" -- will receive more than one standing ovation.