Wanuri Kahiu is the Kenyan Director of the award winning movie, “from a whisper” which got 12 nomination and won 5 awards. Her most recent work is a 20 minutes, SCI fi flick that is set in a post apocalyptic world in which water is scarce, nature is almost non existent and humans are contained. This movie was screened at the Sundance film festival and those in the United States have had multiple chances to see this movie. I was fortunate to be at her most recent screening in which she was questioned by a South African professor. She also opened the floor up to the audience. These are some of the questions that were asked. Wanuri Kahiu will be directing Dr. Nnedi Okorafor’s, ‘ who fears death’. Enjoy!

How did you get involved in film? What’s your background?
At 16, I walked into a TV station in Kenya run by a friend of my mom and that was the first time I realized that this could be a career choice and ever since I have not turned back.

How did this Sci fi movie come about ? Are you a fan of Sci fi?
I am not a fan of Sci fi - I had never considered it before this movie. I started off writing a film about a woman who lived in the future, the script was originally a mixture of Sci Fi / fantasy and because I really wanted to make an environmental film - so I chose Sci Fi, since then I’ve become very interested in this genre of movie making.

Do Africans on the continent recognize and have Sci fi?

Th first time, I got this question was when I started shooting Pumzi and I met this reporter who asked me why Sci fi? This question raised several issues and they are namely – am I restricted to telling a particular story because of my geographic location? Secondly should there be a fixed way I view the world because of my geographic location? We have African authors like Ben Okri who wrote fantastic stories, we have our traditional creation stories from different parts of Africa which all have some form of fantasy and sic fi so I don’t understand the disconnection that some perceive between Africa and Sci fi but there are definitely fantasy and myths that come out of Africa.


The producers of this film are from South Africa – how did you convince them to write this movie?

Convincing Minority pictures was not too hard but the issue was the amount of money that I was bringing to this project which was basically nothing. It was fantastic working with them because we all had to bring everything of ourselves into this project.


Why Sci Fi now?
While doing my research for this film, I was really curious to find out what came out of our perceived history of Africa. We have chosen to become a people who are very conscious about how we perceive our future but we are very aware of what is going on around us. With that in mind, we claim the future.

In this movie, Asha (the female protagonist) is a curator who works in the Natural History museum? Why did you make her a curator?

Asha lives in a world where she has to take dream suppressants to suppress any thoughts of the ‘what ifs’. Despite trying to control her minds and her dreams, there is something within her that tells her that there is more out there. There is something within us that tells us where our souls intend to be – that the reason her quest was to find out what happened to nature before they all ended up in a contained space.


We see a new concept of mother hood in this movie – can you go into this?

Yes, that’s the term Mauiti which is our collective truth. This idea is based on the idea that there is a group of women who are mothers in the community but rather than being maternal like we expect mothers to be , these mothers are manipulative.

What is Pumzi?

This is a world where people are encapsulated and you work for water and the aristocratic/ wealthy commune stays with nature while the rest of humans stay away from nature.


Will this movie be made into a feature film?

No feature film. My story has been told.

Who should tell stories?
Everyone should tell their stories. We have to recognize the fact that stories need to be told by us. The role of story tellers in African society needs to be explored.

How do you deal with people trying to box you in?

I realize that making film is rather a selfish thing to do. I don’t care about issue driven stuff. I’m my own audience and I write what I want to watch. I realize that I can be genuine to myself as an audience. Life is politics. So all my films are political to a certain extent.

 

 pamela's world