The Kenyan filmmaker on Africa’s imaginative tale-telling
Wanuri Kahiu “We have to see ourselves as people of joy,” asserts Wanuri Kahiu. “We are not naturally remorseful people. There are stories of joy throughout Africa’s history — our cultures, myths, kingdoms and legends. All we have to do is claim them.” This mantra has always powered the acclaimed Nairobi-based filmmaker and author’s work. That and what she calls “world creation” — imagining new domains through her narratives and then seducing the audience into believing wholeheartedly in them. Since graduating from The University of California, Kahiu’s award-winning films have included her first feature From A Whisper, the sci-fi short Pumzi and For Our Land, a documentary on activist and Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai. Kahiu is also co-founder of Afrobubblegum, a media-company-cum-global movement that creates ‘fun, fierce and frivolous African art’. “Why, as African artists, does our work have to be associated with seriousness or subjects considered important? Why can’t it just be associated with imagination?” she insists. But that’s not to say her work does not cause change. Most recently, her sensitively told queer love story Rafiki — Kenya’s first entry in the official section at Festival de Cannes, in 2018 — was hailed internationally, while being banned from cinemas at home for daring to show two beautiful souls of the same sex find each other in an unforgiving society. Nataal met Kahiu at Design Indaba 2019, where she revealed some of the African fables, including her own, that bring hope and happiness. RAFIKI rivers. Those who worship them receive good luck. They’re also “I’m not an activist, so being thrown into that space once the film allies of people who protect nature. We need to imagine that there was banned was a huge challenge. But we took the classification are more of us who can conjure up water and change nature as board to court for infringing Kenya’s constitutional right of free a result, that there are creatures who show themselves in this speech and managed to get the ban beautifully curious, African way.” lifted for seven days. That was wonderful. NINKI NANKA Every screening was sold out. And the “Ninki Nankas are glorious dragons from support we received from the LGBTQ Gambia. They have long necks similar to community was really beautiful. So many a giraffe, three horns on top of their heads, queer people said they were glad to see the face of a horse and live in swamps. themselves represented on screen, that There are stories of naughty children who they’d never felt seen or valued before. would get swallowed by Ninki Nankas, That was my biggest takeaway. I want to which also have glassy scales and can add value and I want to continue to be in spit fire. They haven’t been discovered service of the art that is filmmaking.” yet but there is still hope.” PUMZI AFRICAN PHOTO COMICS “This is a film about a young girl called “These were hugely popular comics Asha who is a conduit for nature. The created between the 1960s and 1980s. idea was to show black women in the They were written in Nigeria, shot in role of Mother Nature. As a fan of Wangari Swaziland and distributed in Kenya, Maathai, someone who was seen as a Ghana and South Africa by Drum magrevolutionary for going out and planting azine. They were about Son of Samson, trees, all I could do was celebrate her Cobra and The Spear, and were brimming courage. Asha lives in the inside world with African superheroes in spandex. The because the outside world is dead, and fact that these were full of pan-African she builds a virtual Natural Museum. One images of joy during Apartheid and just day she receives a sample of soil, she after independence is extraordinary to plants a seed and it starts to grow, so she me. They have such life and help us see decides to venture outside.” ourselves as people of radical hope.” JENGU “Jengus are mermaids from Cameroon. They are bushy haired, gap-toothed water With thanks to DESIGN INDABA. WANURI wears KATUNGULU MWENDWA dress. spirits who live in the oceans, seas and
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Photography MAGANGA MWAGOGO
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