When international audiences think of films set in Kenya, they think of scenes of poverty, unpaved roads, corruption and revolution. You don’t think sci-fi. Which is why female director Wanuri Kahiu’s latest film, a short that premiered at Sundance this week, made such a splash. (Read the rest of our Sundance coverage, by rockstar blogger Tanzila Ahmed, who’s on the ground at the fest.)
A still from Pumzi. Credit: Inspired Minority Pictures and One Pictures
It’s the country’s first sci-fi film ever to hit that festival, which sounds like a ridiculously slim record to win — but it’s one that’s culturally so important.
While often, Western film crews dash over to Kenya to make those films that look like the ones you expect, there’s not really a system for local filmmakers to make and distribute to an international audience. The success (read: $$$) of the South Africa-originated District 9 might have changed all of that. Focus Features launched an Africa First short film program and foreign audiences may be warming up to the fact that the vast continent has more than one story to tell.
That’s certainly what Kahiu and her backers hope. Pumzi is a film that could have been made nowhere other than Kenya, yet which tells a universal story. It takes place 35 years after World War III, which we’re told took place as a fight over fresh water, in a community of Kenyans who have hunkered down to live below Earth’s dead surface. The camera follows the Wall-E-inspired tale of an East African government employee who, when she finds a living soil sample, is determined to go up to the surface to find more.
A powerful black woman is the future. Credit: Inspired Minority Pictures and One Pictures
Of course, having this type of tale set in Kenya is not only revolutionary for the image of Kenyan cinema abroad, it’s a revolutionary statement about race. Who says that the future is a country of stolid white males, with only the occasional black man serving as “magical” advisor (think The Matrix) or foppish showman (think The Fifth Element). Why can’t black women be kick-ass future explorers? Why can’t they be the government employees that control the world? And who says the world won’t be entirely black?
While it might seem like Pumzi is a departure from Kahiu’s last film, the feature length From a Whisper — a thriller based on the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam (which snagged five African Academy Movie Awards) — it’s also political. As Wired noted, “Like recent standouts District 9 and Sleep Dealer, the short film taps into Third World realities and spins them forward for dramatic effect.”
In this case — a lack of water and fresh air, very real threats that could devolve into something like what Pumzi captures.
Check out the trailer below:
I was really interested to learn how Kahiu conceived of the futuristic sets. She didn’t rely on computer modeling, but instead researched classic ’50s golden age sci-fi, which relied on matte paintings and rear-screen projections. Of course she thought of making the film that way, she told Wired, as those ideas are in sync with the traditions of African art. “We already have a tradition of tapestries and functional art and things like that, that loan a backdrop for films.”
Related: Our Sundance Coverage
