Reimagining Kenyan Cinema

We can discern significant staking of Kenya cinema in the first four chapters of this volume, which primarily focus on the history of film production, distribution, and marketing in Kenya. In Chapter One, Edwin Nyutho traces the history of cinema in Kenya from travelogues and adventure films in the colonial times to the contemporary practice. Nyutho’s reading of the history of film in Kenya also explores the establishment of mobile cinema, practices of film production after independence, and the legal and institutional frameworks supporting the film industry in Kenya. In Chapter Two, Nyutho provides us with the rise and growth of Riverwood while in Chapter Three, Bob Nyanja shares his personal experiences in filmmaking in Kenya. In Chapter Four, Charles Kebaya examines film distribution and marketing models in Kenya over the years and the influence of digital technologies on the circulation of film in the country.

Since its inception, film as a medium plays a vital role in fostering nationalism by defining and reinforcing the sociocultural, economic, and political values of a country. Chapter Five to Eight examine interactions between cinema and nationhood in Kenya. While nationalism can be about many things, Boneace Chagara investigates how Bob Nyanja’s film, Malooned, provokes national discourses through the evocation of cinematic claustrophobia thereby showing how individual subjects fight for freedom and self-determination. In Chapter Six, Christopher Joseph Odhiambo focuses on how the uncanny is used as a strategy to deconstruct ethnic myths that characterize citizenship, nationhood, and nationness using two films, Malooned and Ni Sisi. In Chapter Seven, Violet Nasambu Barasa undertakes a textual exegesis of Judy Kibinge’s Something Necessary, showing how the film articulates and narrates ethnic politics that characterize the Kenyan nation. Using allegory as a trope in reading two films, From a Whisper and Something Necessary, Jacqueline Ojiambo shows how the films use past historical events to help shape our sense of nationhood and envision the future of a nation.

The country has witnessed unending debates regarding the role of films in shaping and influencing moral values in society. Conflicting and unending debates from various stakeholders such as religious leaders questioning the values, attitudes, and virtues depicted in films has been witnessed in the country. Nevertheless, Susan Gitimu, in Chapter Fourteen, shows how film foregrounds various moral issues in society using select films, 18 Hours, Disconnect, Family Meeting, and You Again. In Chapter Fifteen, Boneace Chagara examines the moral ambiguity of film in Kenya. Using two films, Rafiki and Otto the Bloodbath, Robert Wesonga, in Chapter Sixteen, links the moral debate to censorship showing how its practice stifles creativity and representation in film.

Using diverse methodologies, critical tools, and theoretical perspectives in interrogating Kenyan film, Reimagining Kenyan Cinema situates current scholarship on Kenyan Cinema within the ongoing debates in contemporary global film studies. This approach is premised on the realization that critical discussions on film should lead out of the films themselves towards matters of aesthetics, culture, history, and society. The cumulative effect of this approach is that it allows for the presentation of a simultaneously synchronic and diachronic approach to the study of Kenyan cinema. While individual chapters provide in-depth analyses of particular films, historical moments in Kenyan and key texts, the chapters as a whole cohere into a well-grounded and deeply informative collection of original contributions to Kenyan Cinema.

Charles Kebaya & Christopher Joseph Odhiambo