Heritage

With a borrowed camcorder, artist turns passion into films

BDLika

Likarion Wainaina, Kenyan film and television director and cinematographer. PHOTO | MWIKALI LATI

A borrowed camcorder and the gift of storytelling are what turned Likarion Wainaina into a film/television director and cinematographer.

Mr Wainaina, who has been working in the industry for the last four years, has produced seven short films and four other commissioned jobs so far, despite having no training on filmmaking.

“I have always had a fascination for film ever since I was a child. Storytelling was also something I loved doing; from the Swahili compositions to just describing to my friends the movie I watched over the weekend. Film is the highest form of storytelling for me,” he says.

It is his ‘‘Between The Lines’’, that has earned him a nomination for the Best New Media—Online Video in the 2015 AMVCA— (Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards).

The self-confessed theatre fanatic says his new short film is a ‘love letter’ to actors. “I was inspired by a story my friend told me about a talented actor who was denied a role because she refused the director’s advances. After asking around, I found many actors go through that. That’s how I came up with the love letter,” says Mr Wainaina.

It is a five-minute film with a heart-warming piano piece as the original score and shot at the Nairobi’s Professional Centre, home of the Phoenix Players.

Mr Wainaina started out as theatre actor and when he landed a lead role on a short film by the Mohammed Amin Foundation — ‘‘Payday.’’

As he watched ‘‘Payday’’ being filmed, he observed how the crew worked to bring the film to life. When the shooting wrapped up, he borrowed a friend’s camcorder and shot ‘‘Cel.lu.Luv’’; a short film about the stages a woman undergoes after she decides to have an affair.

“I had a really old camera, a 500watt light and a reading lamp. I had a lot of fun. It will always be my favourite film because I didn’t know anything about filmmaking. All I knew is that I had a story to tell and I had to do with whatever little knowledge I had,” he says.

To build his knowledge, he reads countless books, the Internet and visits film sets. “I am a high school dropout so there weren’t a lot of options available to gain [formal] knowledge. So, my biggest teacher was just shooting and seeing if I got it right,” he says.

Overtime, he grew from being the man behind lighting to directing to mastering the art of cinematography.

“A director is a creator; you create characters, worlds, conflict and peace. There is just something so dangerous and yet divine about that. Cinematography is painting the mood of a film using the camera and lighting. It’s like the story is the canvas and cinematography is the paint brush,” he says.

With Brian Munene, the administration director, and Bruce Makau, the operations director, in their company Kibanda Pictures, they have worked on TV programmes, both drama and sitcoms, for the local TV stations as well as commercials and documentaries.

Mr Wainaina has also directed nine Africa Magic original films among them ‘‘Hospital’’ and ‘‘Death Nest’’.  

“I have a deep fascination, maybe even obsession, with psychological thrillers. ‘‘Hospital’’ was such. I had a chance to delve into the mind of a mental patient.

‘‘Death Nest’’ was a Tanzanian romance film. It was interesting to know Tanzanians’ take on love, but it was done in a Kenyan setting,” he says.

Most of his short films are five minutes long, but he says that a film is defined by pre-production time, with the exception of ‘‘Between the Lines’’, which was shoot in a short time and no budget. They shot the film, which has no single dialogue scene, in three hours on almost a zero budget.

“Film is a visual medium and show the story, don’t tell it,’ he said.

This year, he said he felt confident to submit his short films to various African festivals. Apart from the AMVCA, he also submitted five films to the Mashariki Film Festival in Kigali, Rwanda and another in Burundi.

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