Mwenda Micheni
6 November 2009
column
Nairobi — A friend thought it was a fulfilling experience. But I would hesitate to cast the just-concluded edition of the Kenya International Film Festival (KIFF) in such a positive light, given the numerous shortcomings. This doesn't mean there were no glorious moments, however. Hollywood actor Giancarlo Esposito was in town and so was Jean Pierre Bekolo, a Cameroonian filmmaker.
There were several award-winning films screening, including South Africa's Jerusalema. Then there was Pumzi, the opening film by the Kenyan director, Wanuri Kahiu, who delivered From A Whisper, offered her sci-fi to the audiences. The futuristic film takes one through the worrying environmental degradation that the earth is facing.
Unlike many Kenyan films whose cracking sound and shaky lighting annoys, this one shot in southern Africa fits within the Hollywood template -- the texture, the imagery; the idioms even the acting.
Back to KIFF: In what has become routine, the Nairobi-based festival sneaked into the city before leaving without any apparent warning, at least from where I sat. A week to the festival -- held in the city between October 21 and November 3.
Despite the hiccups, I still call it big because it's the only place you get to watch and discuss several Kenyan films under one roof and alongside other international films. Charles Asiba, who has been running the festival for the past four consecutive years, was surprised when I called with a jolting inquiry.
I needed to know when the festival was starting and who was featuring. "If you don't know when the festival is happening," he wondered, "who does?" For inexplicable reasons, watching well crafted African films make me go gaga, forget the European football witchcraft. A festival offering an opportunity to watch several African films can only be a good deal.
Unlike Hollywood, German and even French movies, African films rarely find their way through the complex web of film distribution that capitalism has created over the years.
It's either nauseating film video den screening a Nigerian film somewhere in a shack, a lonely private screening in a house that steals the excitement that cinema experience should ordinarily offer or little else. The festivals around Africa should offer this "little else".
As the festival ended last weekend, apart from the few filmmakers who were drawn into the cinema halls -- Alliance and the Kenya National Museums auditoriums included -- the rest of Kenya did not feel any festival wave.
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