A brother and sister were emotional on The Repair Shop after a broken projector was restored, giving them never-before-seen home movies of their late parents and bringing them a sense of peace following a family trauma.
Siblings Zaff and Nasari brought the projector to the BBC show, which had been used by their father to film home movies in Uganda. The footage had never been viewed because the projector stopped working after the family fled the country in the 1970s under Idi Amin's rule.
Their father recorded them as children with relatives in Uganda, but after the family was forced to leave, the projector was packed away and remained untouched for decades. Both parents have since died, and Zaff and Nasari hoped fixing the projector would let them see their parents again.
Childhood memories and trauma
Zaff recalled their childhood as "very, very fun times, but the trauma that came after, with leaving Africa. Dictatorship. Idi Amin. We had 90 days to leave the country, and we weren't allowed to take anything with us."
The show explained that after staging a coup in 1971, military dictator Amin seized control of Uganda and ordered the expulsion of the country's Asian population, forcing over 70,000 people to flee. The family left and started from scratch, building a new life in the UK.
Their mother died at 45 and their father died soon after at 50. The projector was locked away for 40 or 50 years, with the pair trying to fix it a few times without success.
Restoration and emotional reunion
Experts Dominic Chinea and Mark Stuckey worked on the projector. Mark successfully restored it, and the recovered footage showed Zaff and Nasari playing in Uganda as children, along with their grandfather.
Both siblings were tearful as they watched the films. Nasari said: "I just feel my dad touching it. I feel like he's here and he's putting it on."
She added: "It brought me peace, seeing my mum and dad and how we were, and my grandfather, how much time we spent together. It's my dad. Everything about it is my dad."
"After them passing away, it's been that long, you forget who they were and how they looked, and the feeling came back again. It made me feel at peace," she said.
The Repair Shop airs on BBC One.
