A film about an elderly Kenyan fisherman trying
for a final catch of a giant shark has won the Best New Documentary
Director Award at a film festival in Manhattan. Announcing the $25,000
(about Sh2 million) award to Dutch filmmaker Jeroen van Velzen, jurors
at the Tribeca Film Festival said they “especially appreciated this new
director’s confidence of style, his restraint, and his deep relationship
to a culture fast disappearing.”
Mr van Velzen, 33, lived for a time on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast as a youth.
He returned to Wasini Island, near the border with Tanzania, to film Wavumba. The 80-minute documentary centres on Masoud, a weather-beaten fisherman who sets off in a skiff with his grandson, Juma, in search of a catch to ensure that his reputation outlasts his approaching death.
Masoud tells stories about the exploits of his youth and the local fishing culture. Other Kenyan narrators recite folk tales about the spirits of the sea.
Reviewers have likened Wavumba to Ernest Hemingway’s novella, The Old Man and the Sea, which contributed to his winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. Jurors at the Tribeca Film Festival, co-founded by American film star Robert De Niro, described Wavumba as “a hypnotic story of man and nature, unafraid of silence, and full of a terrible beauty”.
On the inspiration for this film, van Velzen said in an interview with Tribeca: “When I lived in Kenya as a child, I was very susceptible to the stories told to me by an old fisherman. As I got older, my belief in supernatural powers disappeared, but a part of me still longed for the open way I looked at life and the magic that filled everything with colour. That is why I wanted to return to the country I grew up in. Where I met Masoud, the last shark hunter…”
After asking around, it has become clear that not many Kenyans have heard about the documentary. What we have in the country right now are a few great movies from the past that only a handful of people have watched. For example, Malooned (2007), the great Kenyan picture of the 21st century, is no longer in the minds of Kenyans. It had a good run, as did Formula-X (2008), a movie about the search for a cure for Aids. These, and the many other Kenyan-produced and -directed films have been great attempts by a bold few.
The question remains, why are we not watching these homemade movies alongside Wrath of the Titans and Mwanzo (an animation film that has been a long time coming)?
Mr van Velzen, 33, lived for a time on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast as a youth.
He returned to Wasini Island, near the border with Tanzania, to film Wavumba. The 80-minute documentary centres on Masoud, a weather-beaten fisherman who sets off in a skiff with his grandson, Juma, in search of a catch to ensure that his reputation outlasts his approaching death.
Masoud tells stories about the exploits of his youth and the local fishing culture. Other Kenyan narrators recite folk tales about the spirits of the sea.
Reviewers have likened Wavumba to Ernest Hemingway’s novella, The Old Man and the Sea, which contributed to his winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. Jurors at the Tribeca Film Festival, co-founded by American film star Robert De Niro, described Wavumba as “a hypnotic story of man and nature, unafraid of silence, and full of a terrible beauty”.
On the inspiration for this film, van Velzen said in an interview with Tribeca: “When I lived in Kenya as a child, I was very susceptible to the stories told to me by an old fisherman. As I got older, my belief in supernatural powers disappeared, but a part of me still longed for the open way I looked at life and the magic that filled everything with colour. That is why I wanted to return to the country I grew up in. Where I met Masoud, the last shark hunter…”
After asking around, it has become clear that not many Kenyans have heard about the documentary. What we have in the country right now are a few great movies from the past that only a handful of people have watched. For example, Malooned (2007), the great Kenyan picture of the 21st century, is no longer in the minds of Kenyans. It had a good run, as did Formula-X (2008), a movie about the search for a cure for Aids. These, and the many other Kenyan-produced and -directed films have been great attempts by a bold few.
The question remains, why are we not watching these homemade movies alongside Wrath of the Titans and Mwanzo (an animation film that has been a long time coming)?
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