Kenya Prepares Itself for the Spotlight
An invigorated Kenya film industry strides confidently forward, even with a few missed steps, at the Kalasha International Film & TV Market Fifth Edition 2022
The published agenda announced that Kenya film industry’s three-day trade fair would commence at precisely 8:55 am. On a Friday morning, no less. A bold move, to be sure, in the face of Nairobi Central Business District traffic and, well, the cumulative experience of human meeting-going behavior.
I had been following, though, the Kenya Film Commission’s social media posts for months. The posts’ chipper tone and numerous exclamation points belied a flinty determination to pull off a show-stopper of an in-person, comeback Fifth Edition of the Kalasha International Film & TV Market from June 10–12.
Over the past few years, the Commission had been going all out to raise the visibility of the film industry within the country and abroad, forge common cause with a heterogenous set of interest groups, and prepare the ground for consideration of a new national film bill. No time like the present then to keep the foot on the gas petal propelling the film industry forward. And delivering a credible, high-profile gathering would be critical to maintaining the momentum.
So, while it strained credulity to expect an on-time start, I still rocked up at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre early, grabbed a latte, and sat expectantly in Tsavo Hall to see just how this would all play out.
The business of show business
Kalasha’s theme this year was “Film Business: The Economics of Content Creation in the Digital Era.” From the moment KFC’s CEO Timothy Owase took to the podium for his opening speech (only minutes after the appointed time, by the way) and throughout the following three days, he and fellow speakers stuck to this message over and again. While noting the KFC’s mandate was to “champion storytelling in this country” and “the art of filmmaking,” Owase’s talking points hewed closely to describing the concrete economic, employment, and wealth creation benefits of the film industry.
Several initiatives launched around the trade fair underscored this approach. Owase cited a 2019 Kenya National Bureau of Statistics economic survey that had estimated, for instance, the Kenyan film industry’s share of 4.5% of the total employed workforce. In order to more precisely measure the industry’s contribution to the country’s Gross Domestic Product, however, KFC and the Bureau were now kicking off the first film industry-specific so-called “Satellite Account” survey. The Ministry of ICT, Innovation and Youth Affairs partnered with the major streamer Netflix to announce the signing of a two-year Memorandum of Understanding to support the development of the next generation of storytellers. Finally, a festive drinks reception held in the far upper reaches of the KICC tower launched a film locations mapping meant to be easily searchable and highlighting the diversity of Kenya scenery ripe to host new film productions.
Money and geopolitics: the film industry as economic driver and soft power
KFC is not the first in Kenya to employ economic rationales and analysis to prime the pump for greater internal and foreign investment in what has come to be fashionably referred to in these circles as the “cultural and creative industries.” As far back as 2016, Hivos’s report on The Status of the Creative Economy in East Africa noted a clear lack of prioritization of the creative and cultural sector could be seen in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda “despite its huge potential to create jobs for the youth, boost tourism and build a cohesive national heritage.”
Nor is Kenya the only country to recognize the value of packaging its film industry under the cultural and creative industries conceptual umbrella. UNESCO’s first comprehensive mapping of the African film industry in 2021 leaned heavily into cheerleading for the vitality of the continent’s film and audiovisual sectors and called for quadrupling its “largely untapped” economic potential from the current baselines of 5 million jobs and $5B in GDP. According to that study, Kenya’s film and tv production output, infrastructure, and policy environment placed it in a top tier, along with Nigeria and South Africa, for actualizing the opportunities for market growth.
As demonstrated by the Kalasha panel that included government film representatives from Uganda and Tanzania, Kenya has a far more dynamic, full-court press plan for expanding its film market that has already pulled it ahead of its immediate neighbors. Moreover, outmaneuvering several other contender countries, the Kenya Cabinet also approved the hosting of the Temporary Secretariat of the African Union’s Africa Audiovisual Cinema Commission in Nairobi for an initial three-year term. The representatives from the KwaZulu-Natal Film Commission, while nodding pleasantly, looked slightly nonplussed at the announcement of the news of junior brother Kenya having pipped them at the post for this recognition.
Creativity was commonly championed but not often sighted
For all the mentions of creatives who form the backbone of the film industry, Kalasha was firmly in the camp of commercialism. Buzzwords like monetization, return on investment, and OTT platforms circulated amongst moderators, panelists, and audience members alike almost as freely as the erstwhile COVID virus.
Meanwhile, across town in a small, 70-seat cinema tucked behind a rooftop bar, Ngwatilo Mawiyoo premiered her narrative short Joy’s Garden. The vibe at this micro-cinema — a poetry-reading director, a hip audience sipping cocktails, and earnest cinematic portrayal of a few small moments between a father and daughter processing their shared grief — could not have been more different from the high-octane hustling at KICC. But places like Unseen Nairobi (which bills itself as “a place for film, food & a view”), other curated art and performance spaces, and film festivals all play a crucial role in a robust film ecosystem.
These types of intermediary cinema-showing spaces serve a dual purpose both in developing audience tastes for broader fare, especially local content, and in providing unique distribution and exhibition outlets for local filmmakers. Even as it reaches for blockbusters, a trade show like Kalasha cannot afford to overlook this middle tier of programming.
Finally, for all its pretensions of being a global exchange platform, Kalasha missed out when it came to trumpeting its local films on the international prestige market, that self-referential circuit of festivals mostly in the Global North that can anoint emerging artists and storytelling trends. One of the reasons I attended Kalasha this year was having seen the screenings of Ayaanle (a Somali-Kenya film about police harassment) and the luscious Tanzania historical drama Tug of War at the New York African Film Festival in May, neither of which had yet had public runs in their own countries.
Whether the omission is deliberate because of the history of previous Kenya international festival darlings being rather sensitive topics in country (think Rafiki) or simply a blind spot, Kalasha cannot hope to continue to raise Kenya’s profile unless it’s willing to amplify the out-of-country trajectories of its films. National film industries everywhere are powered by the sometimes complementary, but commonly contradictory, fuel of box office numbers and artistic acclaim.
KFC seems to be taking the approach that a rising tide of the industry, especially cultivating buy-in from the county level and of sister administrative agencies, lifts all boats. Avoiding political pain points or playing favorites is always a lower-stakes game. But a credible film industry and outstanding, provocative art will always demand more than neutral economic arguments as its raison d’etre. Given the speedily improving quality and scope of indigenous film production in Kenya, KFC may have to face navigating a dust-up around some film in the pipeline’s aesthetics and storylines sooner rather than later.
