Lost Somali Dervish film found after 34 years

In an unforeseen discovery of great import to the preservation of African cinematic heritage, the negatives of an epic Somali film thought to have been lost were ‘discovered’ in the vaults of the Pune-based National Film Archive of India (NFAI).

The Somali Dervish, a four-hour-long 1985 masterpiece by eminent Somali poet, playwright and film-maker Said Salah Ahmed, chronicles the revolutionary Somali Dervish movement under the leadership of the legendary anti-colonial fighter Mohamed Abdullah Hassan, revered as the ‘Father of Somali Nationalism’ and known by the nickname ‘Mad Mullah’.

It chronicles Hassan’s two-decade struggle against British colonialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries till his death in 1920.

Shooting of the 280-minute film (also known as The Somalia Dervishes) began in 1983 and was completed in 1985. It was produced by an Indian company. The film was edited and processed in the now-defunct Bombay Lab in Mumbai

In fact, the film is believed to be the only feature-length narrative motion picture produced in the country as Somalia’s cinematic heritage was buried under the ravages of a bitter civil war which commenced in the 1980s.

Subsequently, he had made a string of inquiries in film archives across the globe, including the Washington-based Library of Congress and film vaults in Paris.

After despairing of finding a print or negatives of his debut feature film, Mr. Ahmed was speechless Given its ‘hard-to-find’ status, The Somali Dervish acquired an aura of mystique among African cinephiles, with the film being mentioned in the same breath as Gillo Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers (1965) and Daniel Denis’ Jamila (2011) as being among the very best in the African film canon.

In July, the NFAI Director received a query from Mark Brecke, an award-winning film-maker and photographer with a particular focus on the ravages of war, ethnic strife and genocide.

The story of the making of this ‘lost’ epic is equally fascinating: Mr. Ahmed, a man of parts, was a biology teacher and served as Director of Social Services at the Ministry of Education when he was embarked on his ambitious debut enterprise in 1983, marshalling a cast of thousands, which included Somali villagers, international aid works and Sheikh Osman Omar — a descendant of Hassan to star in the film.

Its sweeping battle sequences invite favourable comparison with another anti-colonial African desert epic Lion of the Desert (1981), starring Anthony Quinn and chronicling the struggle of Omar Muhtar against Italian colonialism in 1920s Libya.

The Somali Dervish begins in the 1920s after the crushing of the Dervish revolt, with an aged Somali fighter recounting the tale of Hassan and his struggle with the British colonists in flashback.

Prior to the shooting of the film, Mr. Ahmed conducted extensive research, including interviews with former Dervish fighters.

Another Somali film, an hour-long documentary titled A future for Somalia (1978), too, was found in the NFAI vaults during the search for The Somali Dervish.