First up, is Walls of Leila which is a love story set in Cape Town South Africa that chronicles the life of Leila, a young Cape Malay girl who falls in love with an American boy, Derek. Kenyan filmmaker Amirah Tajdin and her producer sister Wafa Tajdin are currently working on this film which will be their first feature.
They ran a very successful kickstarter campaign last year to raise development funding for phase one of the project. Ciné Kenya received an update from Tajdin that the team have just begun the production financing phase as the second draft of the script has been completed.
Former Chelsea and Ivory Coast forward Didier Drogba is the focus of the first episode of Football Rebels, which premiered on Al Jazeera on Tuesday, 12 March 2013 at 22:30 GMT.
Presented and narrated by former Manchester United star Eric Cantona, Football Rebels is a five-part documentary on five football heroes whose social consciences led them to use their fame and influence to challenge unjust regimes, join opposition movements and lead the fight for democracy and human rights in their countries.
Upendo Hero as seen at CinemAfrica Sweden Film Festival
Twende Berlin is a documentary about urban spaces and our relationship to them as told through the eyes of a troupe of African hip-hop artists ‘Ukoo Flani‘ on their adventure through Berlin and is produced by African based filmmakers. The film is produced by Cultural Video Foundation (CVF) in collaboration with Urban Mirror. German musicians The Teichmann Brothers and a host of other German musicians are also involved.
After the success of Maskaniflani, an award-winning participatory documentary and music video about public art and public space in Kenya, the hiphop group ‘Ukoo Flani’ started to develop different projects to explore the urban space that they inhabit, using music and art. The group, is composed of 6 members and Upendo Hero (the love hero, pictured above with a love-heart in place of a head) a mysterious character invented by Ukoo Flani to spread the message of love for public space. The social issue which underpins the documentary is the importance of public space and public art in contemporary society, and how and why western metropolises are affected by the emerging phenomenon of “gentrification”.
In ‘ Twende Berlin’ which screened at CinemAfrica Sweden, Ukoo Flani and Upendo Hero discover how artists and the so-called “creative class” become unwitting pawns in the shifting fortunes of Berlin neighbourhoods. Seeking out low-rent areas they move in and shift the demographic and profile of that space. This acts as a catalyst, increasing property values which can then often mean that the original inhabitants of these neighbourhoods can no longer afford to live there. Whilst these neighbourhoods were not necessarily always cohesive communities, often, and particularly in Berlin, they are. The city is, undeniably losing something. And this is what Ukoo Flani and Upendo hero try to find out.
A feature length documentary film about our irrepressible need as humans for family. Named after a commonly huffed adhesive, is about four homeless children in Kenya who band together in a family. We follow 4 kids who find family and a new identity as “Survivors”, living together on the streets of Kenya, huffing glue to endure the hell of street life.
The animation/motion graphics sequence in this trailer is incredibly stunning and adds visual intrigue into a documentary detailing the harrowing subject of violence and corruption women face when entering the male dominated world of politics in Sierra Leone.
In God Loves Uganda documentarian Roger Ross Williams casts a critical eye on the presence and growing influence of evangelical Christianity on the African continent. The film focuses on Uganda in particular, where local religious leaders fueled by Kansas’s International House of Prayer tirelessly work towards promoting legislation that could threaten the lives of LGBT Ugandans.
Ciné Kenya 