{UAH} Lupita Nyong’o: Fame and fame

Lupita Nyong'o: Fame and fame

March 5, 2014 — There is a certain irony about the frequency with which Oscar-nominated actress Lupita Nyong'o is making headlines in Kenyan newspapers these days. For a country that doesn't usually pay much attention to artists, it is refreshing to find Lupita bumping the politicians, including her own father, Peter Anyang' Nyong'o, a Senator, off the front pages.

Her Oscar award for Best Actress in a supporting role for 12 Years a Slave was revealed on the same day that her father announced that he would not be vying for a post during his party's forthcoming elections. I was a little surprised when a young colleague in the office asked me which Senator was Lupita's father. You see, he had been watching the actress appear on a U.S talk show where she spoke about becoming more famous than her father back in Kenya.

Most of us have typically taken it for granted that nobody in Kenya can upstage a politician. As it turns out, there are now quite a few apolitical Kenyans in the younger generation for whom artistes are king, not Governors, MPs, Senators and a motley of other performers from the political stage. The country is desperate for new icons outside the usual political sphere. That is why we rush to embrace a Lupita Nyong'o without pinning ethnic or political labels on them.

Kenyan Government announced a loan facility of 3.4 million US dollars for the country's filmmakers

<b>Beyond the hype</b>
Beyond the hype associated with the first Oscar award for a Kenyan, is there any tangible impact that the success of one individual can have on a local film industry run rather informally, and without any real structures? In 2009, Wanuri Kahiu was named best director at the African Movie Academy Awards AMAA, the so-called "African Oscars", and her film, From A Whisper, swept the awards that year winning Best Picture and five other honors. Just like Lupita, who studied at Yale, Kahiu too studied film in the U.S. "It is ridiculously difficult to be a filmmaker in Kenya, its just not an appreciated art," she told CNN at the time.

 

There has been no repeat of Kahiu's success at the AMAA for Kenyan films since, so it would be fair to say that while awards are a good measure of critical acclaim, there is much more that contributes towards the overall quality of film productions. Directors like Kahiu have benefited from overseas training and technical support from people like the Germans, but for the majority of filmmakers in Kenya and much of Africa, raising money and getting the expertise to make high quality films is a bridge too far.

Last year, the Kenyan Government announced a loan facility of 3.4 million US dollars for the country's filmmakers.

Now, it is fine to create a film fund but where is the investment in training? For how long can we only latch on to the odd success of a Lupita or a Wanuri who is privileged to attend film school in the U.S? What about film distribution? Most cinema halls in the country long closed down and converted to churches.

Lupita and Chiwetel
There are interesting parallels between Lupita Nyong'o, who was born in Mexico where her father had fled to political exile, and the actor who plays the lead role in 12 Years A Slave. Chiwetel Ejiofor, an Oscar nominee for the Best Actor award, was born in the U.K to Nigerian parents who had fled a bloody civil war that broke out 7 years after independence.

Before filming the story of an African American freeman who was kidnapped and held as a slave for 12 years, the 36-year-old actor had just completed a film in Nigeria. Half of a Yellow Sun, based on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's 2006 novel, is the directorial debut of Nigerian playwright Biyi Bandele. Ejiofor plays the lead role of the revolutionary academic Odenigbo in the story set between Nigeria's Independence in 1960 and the Biafran War from 1967 to 1970.

Fleeing from civil war
There is an emotional connection because this is the civil war that forced the actor's Igbo parents to flee Nigeria, first to Paris and then to London. Years later, 11-year-old Ejiofor survived a car crash in Nigeria that claimed his father's life during a family holiday.

Financing the budget of 8 million US dollars to produce Half of a Yellow Sun, the most expensive film ever shot in Nigeria, provides an innovative template for fundraising. Nigerian investment banker Yewande Sadiku created a fund that attracted more than 30 individual investors and institutions, mostly Nigerian, and a few foreign donors like the British Film Institute.

Bandele's film is an example of the recent trend in "new Nollywood," movies made with high production values by young and trained directors, and released to premier in cinema halls rather than straight-to-video. Last year, Nigerian films won 13 of the 27 categories at AMAA with "new Nollywood" director Kenneth Gyang's movie Confusion Na Wa winning the Best Film award.

Half of a Yellow Sun was shot in Calabar, Nigeria, an hour away from Ejiofor's grandmother's home. The filming took place late in 2012, just weeks before he traveled to Louisiana to film 12 Years a Slave. Not surprisingly, the last place he visited in Calabar was the slave museum that commemorates the hundreds of thousands of Igbo who were shipped to America as slaves.

Chiwetel Ejiofor and Thandie Newton in "Half of a Yellow Sun"

Since played the role of former South African President Thabo Mbeki in Endgame, a 2009 film about the negotiations to end apartheid, Ejiofor has become accustomed to portraying influential Africans. In July 2013, just before the release of 12 Years a Slave, he was cast in the part of the ill-fated Congolese independence Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in an adaptation of Aime Cesarie's play A Season in the Congo at the Young Vic (theatre) in London. The preparation for this role involved a weeklong trip to the DRC to meet Lumumba's family and to visit camps for displaced persons in Goma.

Plans to cast Ejiofor as the legendary Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, in a movie that was also to be directed by the 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen, have however been shelved for the moment.

The business of making films is now taken seriously in many African countries, a far cry from the days when Lupita Nyong'o was growing up in Nairobi and acting was always "the other thing" that one did away from a proper job. That this actress has become part of the national conversation certainly cannot be a bad thing for the young industry in Kenya and other parts of Africa.

When the AMAA ceremony is held in April this year, a few weeks after the Oscars, the judging panel will have watched entries not just from the traditional African movie capitals in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa but also emerging centers of film like Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania. With the large number of Africans in the diaspora, we can expect many more accomplished actors like Ejiofor to get in on the act of a rapidly growing industry in Africa.

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Gwokto La'Kitgum

"Even a small dog can piss on a tall Building", Jim Hightower

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