From Commercialization of Film Making to a People’s Film Industry

The Lake Victoria Basin Film Makers Guild (Kenya) an umbrella movement of local film makers based in Western Kenya.
The Film Guild hopes to inspire the local film makers to dream more of film making, learn new tricks in film making and therefore producing more interesting and memorable films.
The FILM GUILD”S vision is to make the Lake Basin region a centre of excellence in film making and the mission is to produce competent professionals capable of producing films that notch international standards. Its only through quality supporting and film making that we can become the new beacon of film making nationally.
It’s our intension as the FILM GUILD to seek ways and means of moving away from the commercialization of film making to a people’s film industry. A new industry that is not associated with professional mediocrity. Our films should be original and creative. We should not compromise creativity and originality at the alter of greed and short cuts. In the recent past, the region has been to the hub of low quality film productions and a place of cheap film labour force, local arstistes have complained of being manipulated and short changed in the industry by outside forces. This trend should be reversed. This should be our agenda as film makers in the region in 2011.
The Lake Victoria Basin Film Makers Guild (Kenya), hopes to create an indelible mark in the film industry through hard work, quality, creative and original scripting. This calls for a concerted effort by all stakeholders:- The region should accept to be spanner boys in the film industry. We should belong at the centre of film making. We need to market film industry to local establishment in the new counties.
The film industry has brought us together so that we can dream together. Tell our stories without fear in our uniquely way and with passion for posterity. We have a choice, to choice between profiteering and creativity. We have everything at our disposal. Lets not be divided to achieve the selfish ends. Some individuals would want to reap where they did not sow, for they see a lucrative market in the region.
As the former President of U.S.A. JF Kennedy stated in 1962 in Ottawa in Canada in poetic speech.
Geography has made us neighbours.
History made us friends.
We have shared common aspirations.
For the future
Our future and
The future of all mankind.
As the JFK stated, Geography has made us brothers and sisters. History has made us film makers and we have shared common aspirations because of our cultural backgrounds. As local film makers, let’s strive for quality film making. It’s a truism, that good scripting is the spine of good film making. World renown film script writers namely: Leighton Grist and David Lusted, once stated that “Writing, like all representation, is never innocent. To write about anything is explicitly or implicitly, to delimit, expand or challenge how it is perceived and constituted, neither is writing ever neutral. We write from a particular position, in habit a particular discourse, which the very act of writing seeks to validate”. From what perspective are we going to tell our untold stories? Are we going for short cuts and borrow heavily from Nigeria as most us have done before? This is Kenya and not Nollywood.
The 1st Regional Film/Theatre/Gospel/Radio and Fine Arts Awards seeks to invigorate cultural and film enterprise in the region by increasing the public’s consciousness of arts and film industry by providing organizational framework that will “market” the local artistes and film makers and their products effectively.
The main of objective of organizing the regional Awards is basically to expose, popularize and support the local film industry.
The Awards ceremony was founded this year to appreciate and recognize the local film makers, gospel artists for their exemplary and unique artistic contributions in the development of local film industry. The local film makers have expanded the space and the dimension of the emergence of local film industry.

The Justification for the Development of Local Film Industry.
The history of Kenya’s cultural, creative expressions, film industry and sporting activities is decorated by some of great talents from the Western region. The region, so to speak, has produced some of the most interesting and memorable creative writers, artistes and sports people. In the world of creative expression, the region boasts of Mrs. Grace Ogot, Mrs. Asenath Odaga, Dr. Margaret Ogolla and Prof. Francis Imbuga. Kenya’s film luminaries like Athumani Kapanga, Joseph Olita and Oliver Litondo. In the world of sports, soccer wizards like Shem Chimoto, Peter Oronge, James Sianga, Ouma Chege. Athletics, Charles Asati, Alice Adala, Kipchoge Keino. In visual arts, we have unique sculptors like Elkana Ongesa and John Diang’a.
A great Japanese philosopher made an observation about artistes and this is what he said “The creative mind do wonderful things but unless the public attaches value to what has been created, they will always be reduced to Toys and Jokes. It is important for those who create ideas, products and unique services to ensure that people see value in their creation. This calls for marketing and publicity. We need therefore, to cultivate a good working relations with the Media Houses to support the local film industry in Western Kenya. What strategies are we going to put in place to market and publicizes our unique services and creation in the region and beyond?
Brothers and sisters, it is a truism, that the various arts in Western Kenya are in the process of decline because they have been relegated to the position of unprofitable enterprises. Unfortunately, such great talents have emerged spontaneously and without organized local or national support consequently, some of the best talents in the region have been “forced” to retire early into oblivion, this has led to the falling cultural and film standards. This has moreover increased reliance on the imported cultural products and film productions. Some of the cultural products have actually borrowed from this region’s cultural potential.

REGIONAL TOURISM DEVELOPMENT
The Lake Victoria Basin Film Makers Guild (Kenya) realizes that tourism has and continues to play a critical role in the Kenya’s economic development. It has also contributed significantly to foreign and employment creation. The local film making will also go along way in the development of both domestic and foreign tourism. We believe that in future, film making will be a profession and not only a hobby. Film making is a big cake for all of us. Through film making, we will celebrate our cultural diversity in style.
The Awards ceremony will be an annual event in the region. We will also expect the participation of other players from the Lake Basin Region particularly, in Uganda and Tanzania (Lake Victoria Basin Film Guild chapters) in 2011. The future is bright if we don’t allow “foreign” meddlers to play Russian Roulette with our film industry. Let’s work as a team.
Film is a powerful social tool for transformative change, for film transcends time and space. It reveals what the eye cannot see. Let us not compromise arts for the sake of sheer profiteering,
Let’s protect the region from film exploitation, greed and manipulative forces. The region should not be reduced to a centre of mediocrity and cheap acting labour force.

APPRECIATION
The FILM GUILD is greatly indebted to the American Embassy for continued support and facilitations of the international film workshops. That has seen great American Film Makers facilitating workshops in Kisumu and Maseno University.
We are grateful to the American film makers like Prof. M.K. Asante, Mr. Scott Galloway, Madam Erin Persley, Mr. Giancalos Esposito, Madam Micks Dickoff, Madam Sandra Ruff. We also would like to acknowledge the Kenya International Film Festival for the organization of the 1st Kenya International Film Festival in Kisumu in 2010 at the Silver Bird Cinema at the Mega City (Nakumatt) and the Kenya Film Commission.
In conclusion, we as local film makers must strive and strategize on moving away from the commercialization of film making to a people’s film industry in Western Kenya.
We wish you a Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New year.
May God Bless you abundantly.

Akech Obat Masira
Chairman
Lake Victoria Basin Film Makers Guild (Kenya)
Presented During the 1st Regional Film/Theatres/Radio/Gospel and Fine Arts Awards
The Kisumu Area Library, Kisumu
December 1, 2010.
Tel: +254 726 164 954
Email: obatmasira@yahoo.com.

Is there a relationship between film and literature?

For a long time, there has existed an interrelationship and mutual influence between literature and other forms of artistic expressions. This has resulted in painting and music based on works of fiction, drama and poetry, as well as literary works emulating pictorial styles and musical structures. The creative exchange between literature and film was initiated in the last decade of the 19th Century. Initially, film was most related to photography and painting.

Literature shares with film the ability to employ the structures and devices of narrative. Sequence of images on screen told a story and this is equivalent to the sequence of words on page. The use of language in film established firmly the connections to literature.

Films, just like in literature, present i) action ii) images iii) words replicating life. Literary works also have a stylistic and thematic basis in a realistic presentation of characters and incidents. Theatre, initially, seemed nearest to film because of the common use of actors and sets. Critics agree that films have a stronger affinity with fiction, especially with the pronounced emphasis on narrative. However, whereas the primary thrust of literature is linguistic, the thrust of film is imagistic/ visual and immediate.

Film draws from the tradition of live theatre which includes techniques of staging, lighting, movement and gestures. From the novel, film draws from structure, characterization, theme and point of view.

From poetry it draws from an understanding of metaphor, symbolism and other literary tropes. Film can extend into areas of the innermost privacy and consciousness just like poetry does.

From music film draws from rhythm, repetition and counterpoint.

From painting it draws from sensitivity to shape, form, visual textures and colour.

Popular film developed with the emergence of the 18th Century novel. Both the 18th Century novel and film relied heavily upon realism as a technique. Early films were concerned, just like with realism in literature, daily lives of ordinary people. The subject matter and audiences were people of low social standing.

An analogy stands out for film and literature. The basic structural units of the novel were replicated in film. In the novel we have: the word, sentence, paragraph, chapter and the entire novel. In film we have the frame, shot scene and sequence. The word in literature and the image in film were similar in so far as they are visual phenomena, both perceived with the eye.

Despite different degrees of explication, both writers and filmmakers use language or languages. Some differences may exist however. For instance, whereas the film is multi-sensory communal experience emphasizing immediacy, literature is a monosensory private experience that is more conductive to reflection. A film is usually viewed in others’ presence who become a larger part of the film’s experience. Each audience member acknowledges the presence of the others. Audience response can also affect perception of a film. A novel is typically a private experience in which the relationship between the author and the reader is relatively direct and immediate. Others’ responses do not impinge on the novel, thus making it conducive to reflection as the reader can pause and mull over or re-read.

The above notwithstanding, the film and the novel are alike insofar as their order is typically linear. Movement is generally sequential and the events and scenes are ordered in direct relation to each other. Whether the order is ABC or CBA, the progression is usually sequential, straightforward and predictable.

By and large, therefore, film is considered as a branch of literature. Filmmakers are indebted to literature in a wide variety of ways. Since literature is a narrative art intent upon creating images and sounds in the reader’s mind, then film is obviously literary- an extension of the older narrative arts. Indeed, the most distinctive quality of good writing is visual: to convey images by means of words, to make the mind see, to project onto that inner screen of the brain a moving picture of objects and events to convey a balance and reconciliation of a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order. Film is therefore visual literacy (as opposed to verbal literacy), a new medium which is an extension and enlargement of the idea of literacy itself. In contemporary scholarship, everything written, for example, film scripts, are a part of the study of literature, thus film is a branch of literature.