Wanuri Kahiu is keen on bringing joy to the world. Especially joy coming out of her home country Kenya, where she started a movement called “Afrobubblegum” with the intention of highlighting joyful art coming out of Africa. The director behind such films as the short film Pumzi (2009), a futuristic sci-fi film set in a fictional east African area and From a Whisper (2008) about the terror attacks on the American embassy in Kenya in 1998, has made a deliberate choice of making films with joy or at least hope. This was also the case with Rafiki (2018) a love story between two women that made it to the Cannes Film Festival and was the first Kenyan film represented there – but was also banned in her home country. We talked to Wanuri Kahiu in between shooting the film Plus/Minus in Los Angeles, which is a much harder endeavor than she expected it to be.

 

You are in the United States working on Plus/Minus a film with Luke Wilson, Lily Reinhart, Danny Ramirez and Nia Long among others – what can you tell us about this film and what attracted you to it?

It is an incredible story about women’s resilience. On the one hand, it is a story about a young mother. A young single mother, who is trying to figure out how her life works and how she pursues her passion. On the other hand, it is a story about a young artist doing everything that she can to get a break in the industry that is so hard to get into as a young woman. On both sides, it is about women striving for excellence and that is what drew me to it. Either through motherhood or artistry, it is about women striving for excellence. That is the most important thing and that is the big takeaway and why I wanted to be part of the project.

What is a common thread in the projects you choose to do?

I want to make stories about belonging; people finding a sense of belonging and hope and joy. Those are the three pillars that my art stands on.

You have co-founded an artistic movement called “Afrobubblegum” in order to create “a fun, fierce, and fantastical representation” of Africa – how did this come about?

“Afrobubblegum” is not only a movement. It is also the acknowledgment that there have always been images and art that is joyful coming from Africa. Because so often what we are told about the continent and even what we tell ourselves has become so colonial in our ability to beat ourselves up about our own truth, so “Afrobubblegum” is a celebration of art that exists and artwork that is being created that is fun, fierce and frivolous. But images of joy have always existed. 

 

How did you get the idea and why the word “Afrobubblegum”?

Because bubblegum is meaningless and frivolous and has really no import (laughs). I was describing what I feel to be a challenge which is the idea of work that is joyous coming from the continent and it was in response to different people from the West asking me why my work was not more serious and that it needed to be issue-driving. My response has always been: ‘Why does it need to be that?’ Besides, anytime you make any character, you create a political being because you talk about race, class, ethnicity, identity in so many different ways, that once you start to create you are automatically saying something about the world that you live in and I wanted to make sure that the conversations that I was having about the world I live in are joyful.

You have said that art coming out of Africa is not as celebrated as it should be. How will you help make sure this is changed?

Africa does not need help! I want to continue to make many images of joy from Africa. I want to make many different types of stories but among them, it is very important for me to tell stories with joyous views of Africa. That is just one of the things that I want to do. Obviously, right now I am making a film that is not African. It is completely American. But it is still full of joy and I want to make sure I tell stories with joy and hope.

How important is it for you to tell stories about Kenyan – or African women?

I think that is the only thing I can do is portray women on the screen; African, American, White, Black – just women of all shapes, races and ethnicities and backgrounds – that is really important to me. It still perplexes me that the world in which we live still harbors such deep-seated antagonism or fear or… I don’t’ know exactly what it is, but it is a very perplexing space that we live in as women. This world that we are part of because we are still talking about things that we have talked about for years and years and it makes zero sense. So, I want to make sure that there are as many representations of women in this medium, being strong and actualizing their dreams, being mothers in this industry. These stories are so important so that we have a different view of the people we are living among and we are sharing the joy as well as challenges. It is important to have an equal measure of both.

Do you feel you have more challenges in the film business than your male colleagues?

I have never been a man so I cannot compare myself to a man from the continent coming out here, because it is just incredibly hard being from the African continent and being a filmmaker in particular. One thing I have found to be very challenging, which I am not sure my male counterparts face, is being a parent in the film industry. What it is like being a mother in the film industry. Especially in the American film industry as it makes no space for that. There are no subsidies for childcare. There are no extra allowances for housing when you are a parent. I think what is really shameful to me is the idea the only way the parental right will change in the industry is if men advocate for it. That is what really hurts. Because the number of women who have been forced out of the industry because they are mothers and because they could not keep up the challenges of both work and being a mother is devastating. I think that there is a huge brain drain that happens especially in the West that completely takes away from the spaces that we should be fully occupying, and I think that has been my biggest realization most recently making this film is the lack of parental rights, especially for women.

How long have you been working in the United States?

I have been here for five weeks with my two children and I don’t know how women do it. It is extraordinary to me.

But you are making it work. How do you do it?

Yes, but it costs a lot. I realize that not everybody has the luxury to be able to pay for the amounts that it costs to just have a child and be in the industry. It is also a bigger conversation about shame. There are ideas of shame around having help in your house, of having a nanny, having someone help cook for you, and having a community around you that helps you. That does not exist where I come from. So, I was confronted with that here and got to feel that. Also, if you want more women in the industry and you want to stop paying lip service, you have to facilitate workspaces where mothers can work – or parents can work. Besides, mothers create audiences in the very least (laughs).

How is the experience of working on your first American film?

There is a lot more support for African women on the continent than there is here. That has been the biggest difference between working there and working there. There is no question that mothers need support where I come from. It is a given. Especially working mothers. We are expected to have support. The phrase that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ are not empty words. It does take people to help raise your children. So, coming into this community where mothers are expected to do everything including their own jobs was such a cultural shift and such an amazing dynamic from a place that is held as the place to work – especially in the film industry where America is hailed as the best place to work, but it is the best place to work if you are not a working parent. That was very distressing. Everything seems so siloed so that everybody negotiates their own deal for their own family and there is no integrated system or ethos or work practice and that truly confounds me. I think that has been my American experience so far.

You might find that the American system is sometimes more about the individual than the community.

Yet, there is increased talk about women in the industry and increased talk about making allowances for female directors. There is increased talk about diversity. Diversity and women and parents cannot be fully included unless the industry appreciates that people have children and creates a system that makes it ok and fair to be a working mother.

Do you think that you, as a female director, have a distinct voice?

There has been a way that stories have been told and there has been a way that we have recognized the way stories have been told and there has been a way that we have been told how successful stories are told. However, if ever there was a time to challenge the way stories are being told, it is now. If we look at the most recent Oscars and the people who are winning, the stories are full of emotion and very personal and incredibly successful and the way they are being told is beginning to challenge what we know. That is only because of the inclusion of women. So yes, there is a difference in whether the dominant telling stories and the people who have not been allowed into the spaces there are different viewpoints, ideologies, languages and gazes. There are different ways that we gaze at people. And the space where all know in the light of the #metoo movement, how sexualized images of women have been. But how can we find ways to be more inclusive, nourishing and respectful images without the inclusion of women? So there has to be a new way of telling stories for women and there has to be a new lens that women bring. Also, others: people who are non-binary, people who identify however they identify. There have to be new ways of storytelling and seeing the world and we have to allow people to tell them.

Rafiki was at the Cannes film festival in 2018. It is a lesbian love story. Talk about how you got the idea for this film” Is it an “Afrobbublegum” film in spirit? And what do you intend with it?

It is based on a short story by Monica Arac de Nyeko called “Jambula Tree”. At the time, my producer was looking for modern African films to adapt to the screen and I knew that I wanted to tell a love story more than anything because growing up there were not enough love stories told about people from my side of the world. Everybody else was falling in love but we were not falling in love. It seemed like we were not allowed to fall in love on screen. So, when I read it, it was so full of passion and love and that was exactly what I wanted to translate. That is why I made it – its representation of love.

The film was censored by the Kenya Film Classification Board – were you surprised by this and did that mean that you have not reached audiences in Kenya apart from the week it was allowed to play?

It is incredibly devastating to have a film that you made banned in the country you live in. It is literally silencing you and telling you that your voice is not important and that the people that you are representing are not important to be representing. It silences but it also diminishes the worth of people. That is an incredibly hard thing to do. It is heartbreaking in so many ways. When your film is banned where you live, people question how patriarchal you are. You are doing something against the government and therefore you must be anti-government. That is a curious thing when you are truly doing it out of love for the people. So, it is a shame. It is hugely devastating. But it is incredibly important and whatever it is named whether it is ‘queer cinema’ or just a love story, which I thought it was all along, there is a need for it, because why else would it cause so much trouble unless it was deeply needed. It was something that needed to be heard.

Maybe it was a blessing in disguise?

I know it was. I would not be here now without Rafiki and also a lot of people for the first time felt seen and that was a response that overwhelmed me more than anything: audiences saying that they felt seen and that they saw themselves happy and full of joy and as accepted. That was the biggest gift that the film could give me. Truly.

You have a few TV series lined up: The Thing About Jellyfish, Wild Seed, The Black Kids and Once on This Island. Are you involved in all of them?

All these TV series are still in development and we hope that they will get shot. Wild Seed is my favorite Octavia Butler book, and she is one of my favorite authors in the world, so realizing that story is for me personally would be the most amazing thing. It is a story that we have not seen before. It is about shapeshifters and changing identities and finding families and being in love and hate with the same person over centuries. It is a story that is so full of passion and love and at the center of it is about two long-lived people. I cannot imagine a better story to translate into TV.