The First Film I Ever Made

I have always been interested in film since I was a child. My mum tells me that when I was a child, she would plop me down on the sofa and put on my favorite vhs tape, a Russian Cartoon called Nu Pagadi.As my Mum would go about her business in the house, she wasn't worried about me as I would crawl to the vcr and hit rewind once the movie was done and crawl back to my spot on the sofa and await this technical marvel.

Flash forward and I am in Primary school, I am spending most of my Saturdays in movie Kibandas (Shacks) in Kibera watching 3 shilling films all day. Until I stumbled on this one film called Legend of the Drunken Master and it starred Jackie Chan.And my mind was blown, as my friends talked about Jackie's fighting prowess I kept asking myself. How did they capture this for us? That stuck with me and pushed me to want to take on film when I get older...

Flash forward yet again and it's 2007,I am fresh from dropping out of high school (Due to financial reasons). My dreams of being a filmmaker dashed, I couldn't go to the film school of my dreams The Mohammed Amin Foundation (MoForce). I later got the chance to star in two of their short films so at least I got to "go there". So I'm a high school drop out, doing odd jobs just to get by,spending my evenings with my friend dreaming up movie ideas and forgetting about them. We always felt that Kenya would never accept our movie ideas. And boy did I wallow in depression for a long time until I once again decided to go watch a movie at our local Cinema Kibanda (Yes, they graduated from Movie to Cinema) and by now the price had risen to 20 Shillings(that felt like the equivalent of an Imax 3D ticket now). And while I am sitting there, emotionally and mentally drained I watched a film that would change my life forever, and that film was called V for Vendetta .And I remember vividly taking the 25 minute walk back home thinking about this feeling I got from this movie. I couldn't describe it, and I rushed to my friend and told him about it (He wasn't moved). I could only describe to him that the movie left me more human than when I started watching it.

And there and then I made a choice, no more coming up with ideas and letting them go,no more fear that the audience won't accept my ideas. I NEED to make films, and to make films that leave people more human than when they start to watch them, to make films that will leave ME more human. So I borrowed a Hi8 camera, and wrote my first short film.It was a silent film as I didn't know anything about recording sound, I spent hours on the internet researching, saving all the little cash I made doing odd jobs so I could go to the cyber cafe round the corner to read everything I could find on Film-making. Later I went and made a friend in a certain film school in Nairobi so he could be my Cinematographer because I knew nothing about recording film.He borrowed a Sony PD 150 from school and we made my first film. It is by no means perfect especially technical wise but trust me it's perfect to me and it has been and will always be my favorite film. I no longer go to movie shacks to look for that film that will give me that "feeling', nowadays I look at this film and I get all the inspiration I want. I hope you find that thing that gives you the feeling to take a plunge into what you need to do in life...