Film director Wanuri Kahiu, actresses Samantha Mugatsia and Sheila
Munyiva during a photocall for ‘Rafiki’ at the 71st edition of the
Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France, on May 9. PHOTO | AFP
Thank heaven for the
judge who cancelled Kenya Film Classification Board’s ban on Wanuri
Kahiu’s film Rafiki, which will now be shown not only in Nairobi at
Prestige Plaza through Sunday but also in Mombasa and Kisumu.
Originally,
the court ruling was that the film could be shown for the seven
consecutive days required for Rafiki to be eligible for an Oscar
nomination. But due to popular demand, the screening has been extended
countrywide to six cinemas in all.
The KFCB would have
deprived all Kenyans the opportunity to see the film, which now has a
real chance of winning an academy award at next year’s Oscars in
Hollywood.
Kahiu was being real when she said she’d just wanted to make a
film that tells of tender love story about friendship, which is what
Rafiki essentially is.
Of course, in Kenya, same-sex
love is still seen as a cultural abomination. But the love scenes in
Rafiki are neither pornographic nor gratuitous, contrary to KFCB’s
insistence that the film preaches homosexuality.
Rafiki
is a well-told story that’s got a Shakespearean touch to it, given it’s
got a Romeo and Juliet theme of two feuding families, the Mwaura’s and
the Okemi’s.
Both household heads (played by Jimmy
Gathu and Dennis Musyoka respectively) are running for public office,
with Kena (Samantha Mugatsia) being a Mwaura and Ziki (Sheila Munyiva)
an Okemi. But like Shakespeare’s sweethearts, the two friends overlook
their fathers’ political feud. They get in big trouble for it, but their
friendship endures. Or does it?
I won’t be a spoiler
to give away too much of the plot. But there’s ambiguity at the end of
Rafiki, which makes the film all the more intriguing.
The two girls couldn’t be more opposite. Kena’s a flat-chested
tomboy who plays football with the guys, rides a skateboard and works
part-time in her father’s shop.
Ziki, on the other hand, is a free-spirited party-girl who’s charmed by Kena, and the feeling quickly becomes mutual.
But
their trials come just as quickly as social pressures mount, first from
the local gossip, Mama Atim (Muthoni Gathecha), then from the church
and the parents, and finally from the mob which metes out its own form
of violent ‘justice’ against the two nonconformists.
But despite those ugly moments in the film, the cinematography of Rafiki is beautiful, as is the casting.
What’s more, the film has got an authentic Kenyan texture as most of it was shot at Highrise, right here in Nairobi.
Patricia
Kihoro was Rafiki’s musical director, keeping the sound-track upbeat
and featuring all Kenyan female musicians, according to Wanuri’s
specification.
Much of the film has English subtitles
since most of the urban conversations are in Swahili and Sheng, which
also adds to the Kenyan feeling of the film.
There will
be critics of Rafiki and most of them will stay home and not go see the
film. Yet when Rafiki wins on that international platform, they can
inevitably claim credit for its being by a Kenyan.
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