CINEMA-KENYA: Lion Man Adamson on Screen Again

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Philip Ngunjiri

KORA, Kenya, Jun 16 1998 (IPS) - Kenya always has prided itself on its wildlife and the beauty of its national parks – two features which a new film, ‘To Walk with the Lions’, has used well to advertise the East African nation.

“The movie is going to be one gigantic commercial for Kenya,” says producer Pieter Krooneberg of the Canadian-based company, Kingsborough Picture. “The movie has tremendous potential for raking in huge profits for all who have invested in it…It looks great – that’s what I heard at (the recent) Cannes Film Festival.”

‘To Walk with the Lions’, which features the work in Kenya of the late, famed conservationist George Adamson, is being shot at Kora, some 200 kms north west of the Kenyan capital Nairobi. It will be shown in Kenya in early 1998.

The multi-million dollar film has the capacity to become a classic and box-office hit, Krooneberg predicts. It also has the capacity to restore the glory of Kenya’s tourism sector, which has been battered of late by everything from cholera, ethnic clashes and the economic crunch to crumbling infrastructure, he says.

The film has the potential to do for Kenya in the 1990s and beyond, what ‘Out of Africa’, also shot in Kenya, did for the country in the 1980s. In fact, ‘Out of Africa’, is widely believed to have contributed greatly to the swelling number of tourists visiting the country. In the 1980s, an estimated 700,000 foreigners landed on Kenya’s doorsteps annually.

‘To Walk With The Lions’ is the story of Adamson and Tony Fritzjohn, an orphaned drifter from north London. The two men taught lions and leopards born in captivity how to live in the wild in Kora.

The young Fritzjohn finds himself beaten up, penniless and hung over in a remote East African town. To get money for an air ticket back to England, he agrees to work short term with a stranger at a game reserve. Fritzjohn discovers that his reclusive employer is the famous Adamson.

Their meeting triggers a sequence of turbulent events through which they discover not only an extraordinary partnership, but a father and son relationship. The two are out of place and uncomfortable in society. Their spirits however, are wholly in touch with the natural world, the lions, the leopards and the spirit of the great plains.

Adamson is portrayed by Richard Harris who has acted in films such as ‘Unforgiven’, ‘The Field’, ‘A Man Called Horse’ and ‘Cry The Beloved Country’. Other stars in the film are John Michie of ‘Truth and Dare’, Ian Bannen (Brave Heart) and Honor Blackman (Goldfinger).

Kenyan actors David Mulwa, Tirus Gatwe, Steenie Njoroge, Tony Njuguna, Aghan Odero, Raymond Ofula, and John Sibi-Okumu, also star in the movie. The film exposes the conflict of interest between wildlife protection, as personified by Adamson, and the pressures from poachers, pastoralists and the ever expanding population in need of land.

In the end, threats from the nearby world conspire against the little Eden that Adamson and Fritzjohn have created. Somali herdsmen, a nomadic ethnic group of northern Kenya, having grazed their own grassland into desert, move south and demand grazing rights at Kora. This situation leads to a feud between the two parties, which causes the fatal shooting of Adamson.

This is not the first time the works of Adamson have come before the big screen. The movie ‘Born Free’ was about the work of Adamson and his wife, Joy, and their relationship with a lioness freed into the wild. It also portrayed Adamson’s affinity for wildlife in Kora, an animal reserve in Kenya.

‘To Walk with the Lions’, once shown in Kenya next year, may however, do little to drum the message of conservation and wildlife protection into the majority of Kenyans. Most Kenyans, who live below the poverty line, perceive wildlife conservation as an expatriate job, which doesn’t touch their lives.

“Why should we take care of the lion,” wonders Njun’ge Mwaura of the Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC), who is unaware of the movies filmed in Kenya about Adamson.

“I have heard of George Adamson, but I wasn’t aware that there’s a movie on him,” he says.