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Arusha residents have no passion for "The Christ" movieby Staff Writer Despite its block-busting success worldwide, the Mel Gibson film, "The Passion of the Christ", doesn’t seem to be raising much passion among Arusha residents. The movie, which recently became available in various local music shops, is still clogging the retail outlets’ shelves as people keep ignoring it. Copies of "The Passion of the Christ’ are being sold in town in pirated video discs (VCD) and dubbed VHS tapes, going at Tsh.3,000 and Tsh.2l000 respectively. The movie is another addition to hundreds other "Jesus" films, which have been keeping religious film producers in the green for years. Other Jesus films, especially the one based on the Gospel of Luke and dubbed in Swahili have been quite successful here and so were the other Bible based movies like "Mosses", ‘The Ten Commandments", "Samson and Delilah", ‘The Bible In the Beginning" and "Noah’s Ark". Currently topping the local video best selling lists are the choir videos produced mostly by the Ngaramtoni-based, Radio Habari Maalum (RHM) studios and Nigerian movies, most of which are pirated in the country. Also struggling to get household recognition are locally made, Swahili dubbed movies, coming from Dar es Salaam whose clearly weak storylines, make their life span rather short in the favourite films list for movie buyers. Home movie watching seems the only entertainment which most Arusha residents can afford at the moment. The town has two cinemas, the defunct Elite Hall and the struggling Metropole Cinema which however also plays movies on either VCD or DVD, projected on the large screen.
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