Wanuri Kahiu takes first Kenyan Sci-Fi short to Sundance
January 26, 2010 by AVReporter
Filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu takes her sci-fi short Pumzi to Sundance this year. Photo By: Chris King
Kenyan Filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu takes her sci-fi short Pumzi, the first ever Kenyan Sci-Fi to Sundance this year.
Pumzi “started off as a small script about what kind of world we would have to be if we had to buy fresh air,” writer/director Wanuri Kahiu told Wired.com in a Skype interview. The movie was made with grant money from Focus Features’ Africa First short film program, the Goethe Institut and the Changamoto arts fund. Pumzi will share the screen with two other films as part of Sundance’s New African Cinema program.
This special program presents three films that reflects a new wave of African cinema. South African filmmaker Jenna Bass draws from ancient mythological storytelling traditions to create a kind of historical magical realism in relating a modern-day tale of warfare in Zimbabwe in her film The Tunnel. Kenyan filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu creates a brightly original science-fiction vision in her film Pumzi, a story of a botanist who risks everything to nurture a plant 35 years after the “Water War.” And Senegalese filmmaker Dyana Gaye draws from the fifties- and sixties-style French musicals to breathe fresh air into Saint Louis Blues, a buoyant road-trip tale set in the clogged urban streets and dusty roads of Senegal.
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Filed Under: Festivals, Movies
Tagged: Africa first, African cinema program, dyana gaye, jenna bass, Kenyan, Pumzi, saint louis blues, Sci-fi, Sundance film festival, the tunnel, Wanuri Kahiu
We are delighted to welcome the following guests to the 8th Cambridge African Film Festival:
Mark Ashurst
Yamina Bachir
Heather Baker
Piotr Cieplak
Daouda Coulibaly
Eric Drury
Lucinda Englehart
Amor Hakkar
Wanuri Kahiu
Margaret Matheson
Cheikh Ndiaye
Mark Ashurst
Mark Ashurst is director of the Africa Research Institute and was previously based in South Africa for the Financial Times.
Yamina Bachir
Yamina Bachir’s career in cinema started as an editor, working on films by filmmakers such as Okacha Touita and Ahmed Rachedi, as well as her husband Mohamed Chouikh (LA CITADELLE and L’ARCHE DU DÉSERT). She also collaborated with Merzak Allouache on his first feature length film OMAR GATLATO and wrote the screenplay for Mohamed Lakdar Hamina’s VENT DE SABLE. RACHIDA is her first feature-length film.
Heather Baker
WAR GAMES is Heather Baker’s first and only film. It was never her ambition to be a filmmaker, but she, and co-producer Marc Allen, came across the story, she happened to be in the right place at the right time! At the time she was working as a pub manager, but she had always been interested in photography and human rights. It took around 4 years for Heather and Marc to complete the film – they did it entirely independently and on a very low budget. They produced, directed, filmed, edited, and marketed it between us while doing other full time jobs. She now works as a Book Buyer for Foyles bookshops.
Piotr Cieplak
Piotr Cieplak researches film and photography at the University of Cambridge. He also writes about film and African cinema. In his filmmaking and photographic work, he is interested in the interaction between the still and the moving image and the different ways of experiencing known and unknown places as well as questions about memory, commemoration and perspective. MEMORY PLACES was made during Piotr’s first trip to Rwanda in 2008.
Daouda Coulibaly
Daouda Coulibaly is a Malian-French director. He started his career in audiovisual editing. Inspired by a traditional tale, A HISTORY OF INDEPENDENCE/IL ÉTAIT UNE FOIS L’INDÉPENDANCE is his first short film.
Eric Drury
American Producer and Director Eric Drury has come to film-making after a varied professional past: he made an early career with the NBA (National Basketball League) in Europe, working in the marketing and partnerships field. He then jumped on the internet bandwagon, creating short videos for clients such as Cartier, dunhill, Bouygues Telecom and Häagen-Dazs.
He finally made the jump to the television, video and film-making world in 2004, working as a freelancer for several production companies in France. He worked as a producer-director for two sports television shows, “AfroGoals” and “AfroBasket”, which were broadcast throughout the African continent. He also provided English translations and voice-overs for multiple television
documentaries.
In 2007 Eric Drury produced his first hour-long television documentary about basketball in Africa – AFRICAN HOOP DREAMS – which was broadcast on France Ô in December of the same year.
He has two documentary films currently in post-production, CAMEROON CONNECTION which was shot in Cameroon and follows four African musicians as they travel through the country on a rejuvenation voyage in preparation for an upcoming album. YUNNAN, SOUTH OF THE CLOUDS is the other documentary film in post-production, and follows a diverse group of friends who hike through China’s south-West province in a post-Olympic gathering.
Lucinda Englehart
Lucinda Englehart has broad experience across the international film industry. She was Producer of MY MARLON AND BRANDO, a Turkish feature film that won numerous festival awards in 2008 including Tribeca and two FIPRESCI awards. She produced feature documentary SEA POINT DAYS whilst living in South Africa. She also worked on THE MOTHERS’ HOUSE, Francois Verster’s previous award-winning film.
Other credits include U-CARMEN EKHAYELITSHA which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2005. She coordinated a network of new township cinemas across the country to distribute this film.
Lucinda did her undergraduate degree at the University of Cambridge in Social and Political Sciences and an MPhil (Political Science) at the University of Cape Town where she lectured and published a number of academic papers related to film. She is now Head of Production at Aramid, a film finance company based in London that specialises in independent films.
Amor Hakkar
We regret to announce that Amor Hakkar will not be able to join us for the Festival
Amor Hakkar was born in 1958, in the Aures mountains in Algeria. When he was six months old, his parents left their village to settle in Besançon, in France. THE YELLOW HOUSE/LA MAISON JAUNE, with its prize-winning film score, was his second feature film. Hakkar is currently preparing another feature film A FEW DAYS OF REST, set in France and filmed in French
Wanuri Kahiu
We regret to announce that Wanuri Kahiu is no longer able to attend the Festival.
In 2008, Wanuri completed her first feature film FROM A WHISPER based on the real life events surrounding the August 7, twin bombings of US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998. The film recently won awards at the Africa Movie Academy Awards including Best Director and Best Picture, the Golden Dhow award for Best East African Picture at Zanzibar International Film Festival and Best Film at Kalasha, Kenya Film and TV awards. Shortly after she completed a documentary about the life of Nobel peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai entitled FOR OUR LAND (2009) for M-Net ‘Great Africans’ Series. She has recently completed a short Science Fiction Film PUMZI (2009) that was partially funded by Focus Features (part of NBC universal), Goethe Institut and Changa Moto Fund in Kenya.
Margaret Matheson
Margaret began her producing career with the feature film IT SHOULDN’T HAPPEN TO A VET in 1975 . Next came BBC’s Play For Today where her productions included ABIGAIL’S PARTY and Alan Clarke’s banned SCUM. In 1980 she became Controller Of Drama for Central Television where she was responsible for many successful series including AUF WIEDERSEHEN PET as well as producing MUCK AND BRASS and the David Leland quartet including MADE IN BRITAIN.
In 1984 she was a founding director of Zenith Productions and was responsible for SID AND NANCY, THE HIT, PERSONAL SERVICES, PRICK UP YOUR YEARS, WISH YOU WERE HERE and THE DEAD amongst others. She went on to be Chief Executive of Island World where she was responsible for Ernest Dickerson’s JUICE and Richard Loncraine’s WIDE EYED AND LEGLESS. She then produced the BBC 1 drama series, CARDIAC ARREST in 1993/4 through Island World.
Wanuri Kahiu takes first Kenyan Sci-Fi short to Sundance
