Kenya's Riverwood

As kids we watched lots and lots of movies, in the open fields and social halls. But that was nowhere near the number that kids nowadays have access to, or the many ways that they can see them. It was our sense, there in Nairobi's Eastlands, that movies were made by others. It did not bother us at all that we could enjoy them, without qualms. It didn't, as, I suppose now, the school system kept pushing us ahead, year after year, toward a hazy future no one told us had limits. 

I also remember (I was coming to this) that going to town in the early days meant going to River Road, and only on special occasions like Christmas and Easter. Downtown was just as big as it is today, but there were unseen 'walls'. River Road was our own, our only, downtown. It was great fun walking up and down it, the pavements full of happy shoppers like us whom we didn't know, and the Indians busy in their shops serving. 

The people who many years later gravitated toward Timboroa, along that great road, and founded Riverwood were drawn there by an old spirit they knew nothing about. They are our little brothers and cousins, and even heirs, so to speak.

Cinema in Kenya has a long and even spectacular history, though through it all Kenyans were kept, or remained, on the sidelines as spectators and, at best, extras in their own country. The spectacle was in many ways reflective of a plenitude of natural attractions. But certain blockbuster productions -- such as Out of Africa, Born Free, White Mischief, and, more recently (in 2010), The First Grader (in which a Kenyan star played the leading role) -- drew their deep inspiration from unique intricacies of life as lived in Kenya, and Kenya alone. What with inspiring Maasai chants, amusingly broken Swahili and a mix of mysterious phrases all thrown in for magical measure. 

Kenya's Riverwood, perhaps inspired in part by The First Grader and obliquely by the phrase in Shakespeare's The Tempest -- "What is past is prologue" -- wanted to change all that. It wanted, and still does, to bring the Kenyan filmmaker and actor/actress right in the middle of this global game. But Riverwood remains a pale shadow of Nollywood, which is a pale shadow of Bollywood (but not in Nigeria), which is a pale shadow of Hollywood (but not in India).


Riverwood pales, to near invisibility, before them all. It is a late, late comer to a game that it should have gotten into several decades ago. As Kenya slumbered, Nigeria  (which has rich and deep roots in African theatre) soared in the world of film-making, through its homegrown Nollywood. Kenya must play catch-up.

Yet all is not lost. Early afternoon yesterday (Saturday, March 11th, 2017), I chanced upon an article in Kenya's Saturday Nation, written by Kingwa Kamencu, about Mwaniki Mageria and the rise of Riverwood Ensemble -- which incidentally was hosting its fourth annual academy awards ceremony that evening. I was amazed by all that she made known to the wider public, and certainly to me, about Riverwood's evolution. Kenya's top trending topic of the day on Twitter was, appropriately, #KFCBRiverwoodAwards2017 -- which took place later last night. I watched most of it on K24 TV. Alas, there was too much TV material in the list of award winners. There was too much KFCB all night, too! 

[An Aside: I think KFCB should get off Riverwood's and independent film producers' backs. It's a stifling force. Its calculated inclusion in the above hashtag was demeaning and distasteful. No one wants to hold hands with the executioner, or chukdari] 

There are certain important events and milestones in Riverwood's winding path through time that I want to highlight from Kamencu's narration:

1. Riverwood Ensemble, as an umbrella organization of some 240 to 300 Kenyan filmmakers (no one seems to know the exact number), did not even exist in 2010. 

2. The filmmakers who were to be at the very core of Riverwood, eventually its raison d'être, were already working their trade in diverse places in Nairobi when Mageria's interest in movie-making awoke. Their preferred meeting place was Timboroa, on River Road.

3. In 2010, Mageria, who was already a vendor of, I surmise, foreign films, had a meeting with Mr. Wachira Waruru, the CEO of Kenya Film Commission at the time, who, in response to his queries, advised him "to go to River Road and see what the producers there were doing" (Mageria's own words).  

4. In 2011, Mageria had a meeting with Patrick Quarcoo, CEO of Radio Africa Group, who offered, on a trial basis, a daily one-hour slot on Kiss TV to the River Road filmmakers. It is not clear if, and for how long, this offer was actually made use of. Other media houses soon showed interest, such as: Njata TV, Inooro and Three Stone Media. But how these offers were dealt with, Mageria did not say. Be that as it may, these contacts, looking increasingly purposeful, marked the beginning of the Riverwood Ensemble Filmmakers' Association.

5. The association is currently working on the launch of Riverwood Channel on Bamba TV, based in Kenya (Riverwood TV already has a Twitter handle).

More can be added, as follows, to that portion of the Riverwood chronology which I have gleaned from Mageria/Kamencu:

2014 (Saturday, March 15th): The first annual Riverwood Awards event was held, in Nairobi (Here is the List of Winners).


2015 (Thursday, March 28th): As Kei reported, the Riverwood Ensemble organized a Movie Night in Nairobi to showcase English language movies produced by its members. It was an optimistic move intended to be the first in a series of shows scheduled for the last Thursday of every month. 

2015 (Saturday, March 14th): The second Riverwood Awards conducted at Alliance Francaise (Here is the List of Winners)

2016 (Saturday, March 12th): The third Riverwood Awards ceremony took place (Click to see the Full List of Winners).

2017 (Saturday, March 11th): The fourth Riverwood Awards night was held at KCC -- Kenya Cultural Centre, previously known as Kenya National Theatre (see full list of Nominees and Award Winners). It is noteworthy that Kizingo, a Swahili comedy, won in this year's best feature film category.

Here is a selection of tweets that were dedicated earlier in the night to the 2017 awards day:

1. I A N M A R K  🔵‏ @IanmarkKimani  3h3 hours ago
   

   KFCB has done away with additional taxation on artists from county governments. This will encourage young artists #KFCBRiverwoodAwards2017
2. 
   

   3 hours ago

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           Arnoldi‏ @arnoldi254  3h

5. It's a shame that Kenya consumes 40% of Nigerian film content while good Kenyan movies don't air #KFCBRiverwoodAwards2017
6. Kibet Benard‏ @KibetBenard_  5h5 hours ago
   

   Top Services Digital Television broadcasting promises to help the creative industry to generate even more income #KFCBRiverwoodAwards2017
7. RiverWood TV‏ @RiverwoodMovies  4h4 hours ago
   

   We celebrate film makers tonight #KFCBRiverwoodawards2017 @InfoKfcb @K24Tv @TufilamuPicture @glangiri @mediamaxke

   

   0 replies7 retweets1 like
8. CAPTAIN MACHUKS™‏ @Machukah  4h4 hours ago
   

   @InfoKfcb Board has barred County Gov'ts from issuing filming licenses to protect filmmakers from double taxation. #KFCBRiverwoodAwards2017

9. 5 hours ago

   5 hours ago

   5 hours ago
   
10. Arnoldi‏ @arnoldi254  4h4 hours ago
    

    Multiple licensing will discourage youth who want to venture into the industry #KFCBRiverwoodAwards2017 @EzekielMutua @NellyMuluka
11. I A N M A R K  🔵‏ @IanmarkKimani  4h4 hours ago
    

    The film industry currently generates ksh 7.2b every year thus creating employment to more than 100, 000 people #KFCBRiverwoodAwards2017

    1 reply24 retweets5 likes
12. Kibet Benard‏ @KibetBenard_  5h5 hours ago
    

    #KFCBRiverwoodAwards2017 film industry creating direct employment to more than 100k people, according to the Pan-Afri Federation of film

UPDATED: March 12-13, 2017 

Yambo ya Bosolo: A Lingala Movie from Nollywood

Found this movie, titled Yambo ya Bosolo -- Before the Truth, in English -- and tweeted about it on October 4, 2015. It's a Nollywood movie shot in Lingala, a language widely spoken in the two Congos (DRC and Congo Brazzaville). This particular video version was published on October 14, 2014, and so far has 8,679 YouTube views.

I was surprised and even intrigued by, and do cheer, this new movie category from Nigeria, which is already the cutting edge of movie and musical production in Africa. Still, that's a huge leap of faith by Nigeria's movie producers. If this category grows, and there's no reason why it shouldn't, Nigeria may well become better known than DRC itself for Lingala cinema.

Of course, the movie also has Yambo, my name, in its title, so I'm being very objective in touting it here, right? Wouldn't say I know Lingala, except for the unmistakable sounds of many, many words, picked and recognized from decades of listening to Lingala music. I can tell Lingala from 'a mile' away, so to speak.

The words in the movie are practically leaping, a dozen or so a minute, off the video and into my remembering ears. Still, got to decide what I make of the movie as a whole. Read somewhere that this is and adult movie, but I'm not seeing that. Surprise! The Nollywood one knows is pretty reticent about that sort of thing.

In the same way we that have come to understand Lingala/Congolese music, with its great tradition spanning more than a half century and regardless of where it was produced, so must we, from this very moment, treat Yambo ya Bosolo as an integral part of Lingala cinema, or better still perhaps, Congolese.

It is of course one, far lesser, thing to dub a movie, already shot in one language, in yet another language -- and not state so explicitly, prior to the dubbing or subsequent distribution. It is quite another thing to dub nothing more than subtitles and to label the whole product a movie in the dubbed language. The original language of the movie, as of all creative texts (novel, poem, play), determines the language under which it is to be classified, if the process is to be concluded without dismay and ultimate rejection.