By Margaretta wa acheru (26 september 2018)
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.
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.
Wanuri 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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