TENA NA TENA

( AGAIN & AGAIN )

You are born, you give birth, you die.

LOGLINE:

Nairobi, Kenya. Haunting pasts and hopeful futures. This is the story of parenting told through the lenses of Donga, an ex-criminal turned musician and Shiku, a sex worker at a crossroads. Trying to break free from lives of hardship, we follow them as they embark on a journey to feed their children and create better options for them in a skewed society.

SHORT SYNOPSIS

Regarded as cannon fodder in a growing capitalist metropolis, Donga and Shiku have known nothing but bare minimums. To the backdrop of excess, they have received nominal guidance, childhood, education, love, shelter, you name it. Circumstances that have informed their past and present pursuits. Having lost a great deal along the way, the hunger to move from reduced qualities of life keeps them searching for better times.

Donga is a budding and talented musician. To earn a living in hopes of funding his musical pursuits, he guides paying tourists through the city he previously tormented as a gang member: showing them a haunting previous life, he is trying to separate himself from. Between surviving in a cut-throat town by yearning to opt out of the street life and the frustrations of booking studio space with nothing more than the promises of passion, what remains essential to him is the need to present a better father figure to his son.

Shiku, a mother of two, contemplates leaving sex work for something "less profitable" so she could spend more time nurturing her only surviving second born son. The crave for a “legitimate” life is contradicted by the effort required to achieve it and the guilt of second guessing leaving the streets, where she earns her money and freedom. But to avoid making the same mistakes as with her first born, she has to choose a new path.

Our characters are making changes to their lives from their regrettable pasts to hopeful futures, with their children as catalysts.

VISUAL CONCEPT

We want to portray our city and its inhabitants oscillating between beauty and realism, capturing the beauty of situations and the fragility of the people. Whenever our protagonists interact with their children, they reveal a calmness. The camera reflects this in still imagery of planned compositions. The anxieties and movements are of human causes and experiences, something we show through a handheld camera when we are on the streets. This accentuates the grit and realism of Nairobi’s fast pace.

The lens will expose the raw developments of the characters as they unfold from the comforts of their personal spaces to the rat race society with minimal staging. We will not dictate the call to action, rather allow the story to unfold naturally. Sound design will play a big part in immersing the audience, letting them experience the city and the character’s surroundings.

Stage of Project and Target

We have already shot some material in order to interest possible collaborators and funders. After developing the film further as part of the Robert Bosch Stiftung’s programme “Follow the Nile”, We are looking for co-producers, broadcasters and distributers to come on board.

LOGLINE

Normal trade ends at 5pm. But their line of work redefines ‘close of business’. This is the story of the city that wakes up when another goes to sleep.  

SYNOPSIS

At sunset, “the city under the sun” transforms to the under city. Street urchins and sex workers from the shanty slums and ghettos descend into the town for the start of ‘business’. Some make it to dawn. Others remain hidden behind neon lights under a navy blue sky. Would you like to know what happens when you go to sleep in Nairobi?

BACKGROUND:

Strange Loop: INEQUALITY- CRime- Death-Injustice-INEQUALITY- CRime- Death-Injustice-INEQUALITY- CRime- Death-Injustice-INEQUALITY- CRime- Death-Injustice

Freedom, generally, is having the ability to act or change without constraint. Something is "free" if it can change easily and is not constrained in its present state.

Liberty, is the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behaviour, or political views.

to mean the ability to do as one wills and what one has the power to do

Despite a substantial percentage of children being cared for by guardians and institutions like the government’s free education programme, many, especially ones from unkind rural and slum backgrounds, are left to chance and exposed to unfavourable conditions that force them to resort to street living. For a while now, county governments and other government institutions have failed at addressing the issue of children living in the streets because despite the incarceration of these minors and youth the numbers keep soaring. Some other counties have resulted to much more extreme measures of getting rid of them. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/10/exposed- kenyan-polices-brutal-attacks-on-street-children). Instead of addressing the source, our society is more inclined to cleaning up the mess which in this case is street children. However, there are families trying to keep their young off the streets but the cost of attempting this leaves them vulnerable to become automatic outcasts for doing rewardless and mostly mope chores and living by the string, and so become background fodder, living in shade, in a city that is fast and unwelcoming. Most times these professions are subject to insurmountable risks.