Wah-Wah

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In Winter 2004 Richard E. Grant’s biographical film, Wah-Wah was filmed, with Boshimela as the setting for the story’s family home.  The home was partially transformed to look as though it belonged in the pre-independence  1960s by the set designers, and all of the cast and crew immersed themselves in the Piggs Peak atmosphere for the six weeks of filming.  The weather was bright and sunny for the duration, and the movie features plenty of drammatic landscape scenes of the surrounding valley, which captures it so well. 

It was the first movie ever to be filmed in Swaziland and involved some of the Coral Stephens staff as extras.  The film featured distinguished actors like Miranda Richardson, Julie Walters, Gabriel Byrne and Nicholas Hoult and was a commercial success. 

There was an army of caravans parked in the horse’s field filled with caterers, make up people etc. and when they wrapped, they all disappeared and it looked as though no one had been there at all.   Boshimela had its own quiet role and provided a relaxed, comfortable backdrop.

Grant’s subsequent book called “The Wah-Wah Diaries: The Making of a Film” details the trials of making the movie – here is an extract of a review of the book by Tim Ecott (The Guardian Newspaper):

“Grant brings the tortuous directing process to life, interspersing the filmset action with fascinating snippets of memoir about his childhood in Swaziland. The plot of the film, and hence the “diary”, deals with his parents’ divorce and what Grant refers to as his father’s “schizoid alcoholism”, whereby “his charming and generous persona by day was in acute contrast to the morose and destructive demon he became at night”. Recreating scenes involving his parents after almost 40 years reveals to Grant that “pain has no sense of time”. The term “Wah-Wah” is a reference to his American stepmother’s description of the accents and speech of the Swazi colonials in whose company she found herself.

Swaziland also comes out of The Wah-Wah Diaries well, with just a few passing references to Grant’s guilt at making a film in a country battling with poverty and in the grip of an Aids epidemic. He writes lovingly about the lush countryside around Pigg’s Peak, but understandably does not venture into any of the issues surrounding Mswati’s autocratic, and at times profligate, style of kingship. The King himself intercedes to prevent one of his government ministers fleecing the film crew for £100,000 to cover, among other things, “the use of Swaziland scenery”.

The Wah-Wah Diaries spans the period from October 1999, when he began writing, to November 2005, when Grant finally learns that a UK distributor will take on his film. Grant’s skill is in capturing the intense but ephemeral relationships that actors and crew forge during production. As many of the cast assemble for the world premiere in Edinburgh, he misses the camaraderie they had in Africa: “It feels like meeting up with someone you once had a passionate relationship with and now find yourself making small talk.”