5 Reasons Why The Kenyan Film Industry Is On It’s Deathbed

The film industry is dying…a slow painful, sad, tragic, death. I came to this conclusion after looking for decent 2014-2013 Kenyan movies to watch and coming across a few measly ones most of them ‘Machangi’ like.

This year alone has seen the release of about two major non-vernacular movies namely The Stories of Our Lives and Veve, last year the only memorable movie released was House of Lungula. This all going down in a country with a myriad of talented actors, directors, script writers and actresses ,a situation which I find rather disappointing.

What has led to this dismal state of the film industry? Movie lovers ask. Are producers are not working hard enough? Do we have unwilling actors? Are the stakeholders in the industry including the Kenya film Classification Board sleeping on their job? Or is there no money to fund movie projects?

These deep, burning and hard hitting questions could only be unraveled by someone in the game and that’s why we sought out one of the most talented and passionate actors Gerald Langiri who also runs the only Kenyan website for actors, actors.co.ke.

Gerald says that the industry is failing for a myriad of reasons. First there is no money to fund these projects. People want to create award-winning, out of this world, high quality movies but there are no funds to support their projects. So, most movie producers are forced to create a movie on a budget which has led to low-quality movies that look like camera copies, which Kenyans turn away from. This is because Kenyans are used to awesome Hollywood movies with a crazy budget of 22.96 Billion Kshs such as Spider-Man 3. Who in Kenya would be willing to fork out that copious amount of money? If Nairobi Half life has not gotten back its 50 million shillings 2 years on how is one supposed to get returns from a 22.96 Billion movie?

Talking of Nairobi Half Life, this brings us to the second point, Pirates. Movie Pirates have brought down the movie industry down to its knees, this is because a producer can invest 50 Million Kshs then someone hawks it off for 50 Bob! Now that is just melanchonic! It’s no wonder Nairobi Half Life couldn’t get back the money.

Number 3 Kenyans are not willing to buy local productions. Why? They find that most of these movies lack in terms of video quality. As Kenyans we are used to high-budget, high-quality movies and most of us would not be willing to cough up 500 to watch a low-quality Kenyan Movie. And as I stated earlier, quality is degraded by lack of funding.

Number 4, most movie theaters are unwilling to showcase Kenyan movies. This is because they know that the returns will be little as Kenyans are just unwilling to watch Kenyan movies since most Kenyan movies do not live up to the expectations. And if by chance, the cinemas showcase the Kenyan movies, the little profits are split 50/50 between the producers and the cinemas.

I also believe that the Kenya Film Classification Board is crippling this industry by nipping talents in the bud. This is usually done by banning and arresting the movie producers, case in point Story of Our Lives which was banned due to the opinion that the movie promoted homosexuality. Whatever that means.

Movie production is all about expressing yourself, treading where many fear to tread, and that is how an industry grows, by thinking out of the box .But if you keep censoring movies such as the stories Of our Lives because you think people will ‘catch homosexuality ’ from watching it is utter claptrap .

In your attempt to be the moral gatekeepers of the society, you are killing talent and if there are no movies to be shown, then what is the essence of having KFCB in the first place?

So what do we do to save our Film industry from R.I.Ping and save the jobs of talented actors, actresses and other key-players in the film industry? First I recommend that the government invests in the film industry just like they do in the science and other ‘sciency’ industries. Second, Kenyans should try and support their own and movie producers I reiterate should at least try and make some of these movies gripping.