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How It Was With Dooms: A True Sotyr From Africa

The book How It Was With Dooms: A True Sotyr From Africa was made into the movie Duma.

Which one did you like better, the book or the movie?  There are 9 votes for the book, and 10 votes for the movie.

Book details for How It Was With Dooms: A True Sotyr From Africa

How It Was With Dooms: A True Sotyr From Africa was written by Xan Hopcraft. The book was published in 1997 by Aladdin. More information on the book is available on Amazon.com.

 

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Twelve-year-old Xan Hopcraft grew up with a pet cheetah at his home in Nairobi, Kenya. When the magnificent animal died, Xan wrote a story about what it was like to own a cheetah and how he died. With both photographs and Xan's own drawings, here is a rea... Read More
Twelve-year-old Xan Hopcraft grew up with a pet cheetah at his home in Nairobi, Kenya. When the magnificent animal died, Xan wrote a story about what it was like to own a cheetah and how he died. With both photographs and Xan's own drawings, here is a real story of life in Africa.

Movie details for Duma

The movie was released in 2005 and directed by Carroll Ballard, who also directed Never Cry Wolf (1983), The Fly (1986) and Fly Away Home (1996). More information on the movie is available on Amazon.com.

Actors on this movie include Alex Michaeletos, Campbell Scott, Mary Makhatho, Nthabiseng Kenoshi, Hope Davis, Jennifer Steyn, Nicky Rebello, Garth Renecle, Andre Stolz, Charlotte Savage, Ronald Shange, Eamonn Walker, Nadia Kretschmer, John Whiteley, Clive Scott, Catriona Andrew, Errol Ballentine, Michele Levin, Sam Ngakane and Adelaide Shabalala.

Read More About This Movie

This African tale follow the rhythms of director Carroll Ballard's earlier films The Black Stallion and Fly Away Home, namely a child is drawn into the mysteries and magic of an animal. Xan (newcomer Alexander Michaletos) is a 12-year-old living in South ... Read More
This African tale follow the rhythms of director Carroll Ballard's earlier films The Black Stallion and Fly Away Home, namely a child is drawn into the mysteries and magic of an animal. Xan (newcomer Alexander Michaletos) is a 12-year-old living in South Africa with his parents (Campbell Scott and Hope Davis, who appeared as a much different couple three years earlier in The Secret Life of Dentists) when they find an abandoned baby cheetah. They bring it up as their own and name it the Swahili word for cheetah, Duma. After some time, the creature is too big to stay domesticated and Dad tells the boy they will have to journey back to Duma's home to set him free. A sickness makes the family pull up stakes and head to the city where Xan and Duma don't fare well. Xan must take Duma on his own to set him free. To tell more would be a crime. As with any Ballard film, the story is subtext, the visuals rule. First-time cinematographer Werner Maritz fills the screen with the desert landscape and is able to capture the magnificent speed of the cheetah. Ballard's films seem to build on their own inertia, creating scenes that seem to be simply happening instead of scripted, although this often suffers in the balance of wonderment versus all-too-lucky occurrences. Based on the children's picture book/memoir How It Was with Dooms by Xan and Carol Cawthra Hopcraft, this is a film worth seeking out, especially for families and kids above 5 years old. --Doug Thomas