Nairobi tops E. Africa as film capital backed by training, technology

Nairobi is fast becoming the film capital of the East African region. Both in terms of film festivals and film premieres, the city has seen a veritable explosion of cinematic activity.

There was a University Campus Film festival at universities during the recent Samosa Festival followed by the Slum Film Festival that just finished screening film shorts from all over the world, including Kenya, in various informal settlements in Nairobi. Top awards were given in three categories—namely documentary, drama and news journalism plus a special Judges award.

Again, the Kenyan Commission for Unesco together with the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers are running an Inaugural ‘Safari Film Festival’ from October 12 through October 24. It is showing a dozen Kenyan works in five counties, with the final screenings at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) on October 23-24.

The 12 films being shown are Beautiful People, Beyond Limits, Enkishon The Maasai Child in Kenya, Mjini, and Nina. Others are Public Participation in Strengthening Devolution, Saikati the Enkabaani, Salt Production, Shoes, The Road Side, Uruasi Music and Dance of the Taveta and Zamora.

The Festival is a commemoration of 50 years of co-operation between Kenya and Unesco. The films will be shown in Kisumu, Machakos, Mombasa, Nairobi and Nyeri counties.

The Safari Festival ends on the day the Udada International Film Festival opens at the Nairobi National Museum. The ‘Sisterhood’ festival will launch a series of films made by women directors from all over the world,

“Out of the 80 films that responded to our [on-line] call for women-made films, only 20 came from Kenya,” said Wanjiru Kinyanjui, the Berlin Film School-trained filmmaker and lecturer at the Multimedia University in Nairobi.

“We hope to make the festival an annual event and that more Kenyans will submit next time,” said Wanjiru, who is one of three Kenyan female filmmakers working with Goethe Institut’s Barbara Reich on planning the festival. The other two are Matrid Nyagah and Naomi Mwaura.

Apart from film festivals there have been a plethora of original Kenyan film premieres in the recent past which further reflect the incredible cinematic energies that have been stirred among Kenyans in the last few years.

One can’t be sure what has triggered this avalanche of initiatives. But a lot of the enthusiasm for film may have to do with technology since even smart phones have video cameras that can be used to make short films.

Even before smart phones, increasingly compact film cameras have been on the market, enabling ordinary unschooled individuals to gain experience shooting films of their own.

Then of course both Kenya Institute of Mass Communication and Kenyatta University have film departments and filmmaking workshops have been ongoing since the Nineties starting with Medeva and Mohammed Amin’s film institute.

Two other film firms that have run film training workshops in the last few years are Ginger Ink Ltd and One Fine Day Films, which jointly produced the award-winning feature film, Nairobi Half Life. Following on NHL’s heels came Something Necessary about the post-election violence period and most recently, the two expatriate-owned film firms produced Veve, featuring Kenyan cast and crew which also promises to be a winner.

Veve (miraa) premiered two months ago and tells a fascinating story having several sub-plots and profound political overtones that should resonate among Kenyans for their relevance.

Other brand new films made by Kenyans have premiered in the last few months include Cajeton Boy’s murder mystery entitled Strata and Iki Mann’s Beautiful Tree, Severed Roots, which was first shown at the September Storymoja Festival.

All of these suggest that local filmmakers are growing, aided by a number of foreign governments and NGOs as well as by the Kenya government’s new Youth Fund.

Other programmes that have recently opened include the Ubuni Film School and the Unilever-funded Film Academy which will be running a three-day programme in collaboration with MoFilms, a UK-based company that specialises in making commercial films that cater to corporations that understand the power of cinematic storytelling.

Applications for inclusion in the Unilever-Mofilm Film Academy are being accepted until end of month.