/ARTS WEEKLY: Making African Movie Painstaking Task for Western Filmmakers

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Katy Salmon

NAIROBI, Feb 11 2003 (IPS) - Making an authentic-looking African movie is a painstaking task for Western filmmakers. Too often, they bow to pressure from cautious financiers and insurance companies and choose a safe location like South Africa, even though the film is set thousands of kilometres away on the other side of the continent.

When dark-skinned Africans are used to portray Arabic-featured Somalis, as in Ridley Scott’s ‘Black Hawk Down’, the film loses all credibility.

German producer Peter Hermann, who trained as an ethnographer, and writer/director Caroline Link, were determined not to do that. As a result, it took seven long years to fulfil their dream of turning the best-selling autobiography, ‘Nowhere in Africa’ into a film made in Kenya.

”I don’t think it’s a good idea to dress up Zulus (in South Africa) as Maasai (in Kenya and Tanzania) or vice versa. Those details have to be true because, after all, the people tell much about their country and lend a special atmosphere and sense of place to a film. It’s not something you can simply recreate,” says Link.

Their attention to detail paid off, with ‘Nowhere in Africa’ winning a nomination for Best Foreign Film at this year’s Golden Globe Awards.

Stefanie Zweig’s novel tells the story of her Jewish family’s flight from Adolf Hitler to Kenya in 1938 when she was six years old.

The transition is extremely challenging for her bourgeois middle-class family. Her father, Walter, is forced to give up his profession as a lawyer and become a farm-manager during a time of severe drought.

Her mother, Jettel, finds it even harder to come to terms with her new life. Walter asks her to spend the last of their savings on a fridge but, instead, the spoilt socialite splashes out on a glittering evening gown, which ends up gathering dust in the back of her closet.

The hero of the movie is Owuor, the family cook, who loyally supports the three refugees as they struggle to adapt to their new home, in particular, developing a firm friendship with Regina, the young girl.

Finding someone to play this role proved difficult.

”They started looking for a black actor from Germany. They looked in South Africa. Link rejected everybody,” explains Sidede Onyulo, who was eventually chosen for the part.

Local casting agent Lenny Juma remembered working with Onyulo in various theatre productions and finally tracked him down in his rural lakeside home in western Kenya.

It was such determined support from the local film community that made it possible for the film to be made in Kenya.

”At the beginning I thought it’s quite impossible to shoot the film in Kenya,” recalls Hermann.

”1997 was the year of Rift Valley cattle fever, of El Nino floods and political riots, and I thought, ‘It’s impossible’.

”Then I got in touch with local film people and they convinced me they were able to do it. I travelled around and saw these wonderful locations and we decided to shoot here,” he says.

There was further trouble with pre-production in mid- 2000 and Hermann was on the verge of relocating to South Africa.

”There was drought and all the Maasai with their cattle came to Nairobi. There was no electricity and you had to buy water. I thought, ‘People are dying. Is it really possible to shoot a film here?’ People were panicking,” he recalls.

Again, it was the enthusiasm of the Kenyan crew that persuaded him to stay.

”They were fighting for this film. People worked like hell for this film, not like a normal job, going into an office. They really fought for it because I think they tried to prove that is possible to do films in Kenya,” he says.

In his quest for authenticity, Hermann was determined to use the local Kiswahili language for conversations with and among local people. This led to a major stand-off with film distributors and television stations.

”They don’t like subtitles at all. But we fought for it. I can’t imagine Pokot people speaking German. I’d hate it,” he says.

The actors also participated in real Kenyan ceremonies, like the Kikuyu council of elders rain ceremony and the Pokot savannah ceremony.

”That’s really a rite of passage for young men of a specific age group. The only thing we influenced was the clothes. Nowadays, the young men also wear T-shirts,” explains Link.

Inevitably, ‘Nowhere in Africa’ is being compared with ‘Out of Africa’, also set in Kenya.

But its makers believe the film is more realistic than such Hollywood productions.

”My story is about an involuntary escape from the beloved home country. It’s not about some great adventure trip to paradise,” says Link.

”I didn’t want to use a neon marker and says, ‘Look here! We’re making a movie with awesome landscapes and spectacular shots of safaris. Everyone’s seen that a hundred times already.

”I concentrate very much on the relationship of the parents. They suddenly find themselves in difficult circumstances. Their love falters and must be re-found,” she explains.

Perhaps it is the novelist Zweig’s own understanding of Kenyan culture that makes the film work so well. Her closeness to Owuor and the rest of the local population means that Kenyans have meaningful roles, unlike in many other Western stories about Africa.

Their culture is also taken seriously. In one of the most moving scenes, Jettel is struggling to come to terms with the fact that her mother has died in a German concentration camp.

She is out walking when she sees an old lady lying under a tree waiting to die. At first, she is outraged and orders the old woman to be carried back into her hut and treated. But the woman’s daughter explains that her mother wants to be laid outside because she is ready to die. ”She is not alone. She is with the ancestors,” she tells Jettel.