This is me

When I was 14, I sat in a career talk at my high school, listening to the motivational speaker explain the SMART (acronym) way to choose a career. The speaker told us that our career choices should be guided by our abilities and interests, and this is what led me to shift from ‘I want to be a psychologist’ to ‘I want to be a filmmaker.’ At the time, everybody else was becoming a doctor, lawyer, pilot or engineer- but I have always been different anyways, so I never changed my mind about it. 

My first screenplay, You, Me & Us I wrote when I was 16, in Pango: during night preps and those form 3 Mathematics and Kiswahili lessons. It is set in Brooklyn, NY (yes, the one in USA) and it is a drama/romance about Leone, an African American basketball enthusiast– and I wrote it before I ever watched Jason’s Lyric or Poetic Justice- I’m just gangsta that way :)

 

Coming out of high school, I realized that the most commended film training institutions in Kenya are waaaaay too expensive- and the ones outside Kenya even more so. I was still confident that my awesome screenwriting genius would lead me straight to Hollywood (money, glitters and fabulous dresses, *yay!). I continued writing, and sought partnership with several local production houses that you have never heard of. I emailed and called, and sent treatments and teasers- but I quickly found out that… well… many local production houses are simply unwilling to solicit awesome genius scripts from 18 year old awesome genius screenwriters. After several unreplied emails a friend gave me advice (Kagondu, thanks!)- ‘start small’. She knew I wanted Hollywood (money, glitters and fabulous dresses, *yay!)- I wanted to make it big immediately, and I was relying on my self-taught awesome screenwriting genius to bring it to me. She told me to forget the big leagues and just do what I can. This advice pushed me to make my first independent film, Astray with a total cast and crew of 5 people. (*This film is currently being transported by a Moroccan transporter/hitman to a submarine cave in the Dead Sea, and you will never watch it ever. Ever!) I learnt that even awesome genius screenwriters have a lot to learn, and instead of sending applications to production houses, I spent more time leaning from workshops, being on set, and whatever other screenwriting/filmmaking classes/experience I could get.

Since then, I’ve worked on different films doing different things- runner, 2^nd AD, assistant set designer, light-holder-person, writer, production manager... I am an independent Kenyan filmmaker- O wait- an independent Kenyan hustler. 

Check out a stop motion animation that I made this year: