Monthly Archive for September, 2011

AMPAS in Africa, Part Four: The Mountain Gorillas of Rwanda

September 26, 2011 in John’s Bailiwick
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Shani is standing quietly among a dozen or so much taller, more robust men as our driver and guide, Hope, pulls the 4 wheel drive van into a turnoff and parks.

Shani, our porter.

As our AMPAS group reaches into the back of the truck for the hiking gear, men in blue overalls slowly gather around us; they are porters, hoping to be chosen to carry our daypacks for the trek into Volcanoes National Park, home of the Rwandan mountain gorillas. It seems unlikely we need “porters.” We aren’t exactly on overland safari. Hope comes over to me. “They are local villagers,” he says quietly. “They need the work. If there is no work, there is, perhaps, more chance of poaching.” Clearly, the Volcanoes National Park Service needs the support of the local community. We understand. Primatologist Dian Fossey worked and lived in these mountains decades ago. She fought to save mountain gorilla families from poachers. The government and the people of Rwanda understand today that the mountain gorillas are a major natural asset—and their greatest tourist attraction. Continue reading ‘AMPAS in Africa, Part Four: The Mountain Gorillas of Rwanda’

AMPAS in Africa, Part Three: Kigali and Rwanda

September 19, 2011 in John’s Bailiwick
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Arrivals terminal, Kigali airport.

“This isn’t quite what I expected,” says one member of our Academy team as we are walking across the tarmac toward the arrivals building at the Kigali, Rwanda airport. What we had expected was something akin to the claustrophobic confines of the Nairobi airport with its erratic computer check-in and dim, dirty lighting, a SNAFU default for any country struggling with a desperately overtaxed infrastructure. What we find here is a quiet, spacious, fresh scrubbed arrivals hall and a welcoming committee complete with a video crew from Rwanda Television—led by our soft-spoken host Eric Kabera.

Eric Kabera interview for Rwandan TV.

I had read that a legacy of the French/Belgian colonial tradition that survives in Rwanda is a near fetish attention to pride of civic, public space; we are to see this everywhere, from the tidiness of small sundries’ kiosks, to the linen of even simple restaurants, to the well tended grounds of traffic roundabouts, even to the perfectly cultivated rows of potato plants in the fields above Musanze that lead right up to the stone wall perimeter of the Volcanoes Mountain Gorilla Preserve. Continue reading ‘AMPAS in Africa, Part Three: Kigali and Rwanda’

AMPAS in Africa, Part Two: Nairobi

September 12, 2011 in John’s Bailiwick
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Nairobi skyline at dawn.

What may be the only 35mm motion picture camera in Nairobi is, at dawn this past July 15, mounted  on a tripod on the roof of a downtown office building. Eight young cinematographers from several African countries are waiting to operate their first scene ever with a  film camera: a shot of the magic hour Nairobi skyline, an establishing shot for a feature length motion picture titled Nairobi Half-Life. The director, “Tosh” Gitonga, must be overwhelmed by his eager African camera crew and its two Anglo mentors, an outsized group if ever there were one—for a simple second unit setup. Jacub Bejnarowicz, a young Polish cinematographer working in Berlin, and I have spent much of the week in intensive workshops with seven young men and one young woman from half a dozen African countries. Like virtually all movie production in Nairobi, we have been using only digital video cameras. There is no film lab in Kenya, and no major film camera rental facilitity. Jacub had brought an Arriflex 235 and six 400′ rolls of Kodak film with him from Berlin, the exposed film to be developed back in Germany.

After the magic hour shot is made, the camera crew poses for a crew photo on the rooftop.

Nairobi workshop cinematographers, Lily Wanjira holding the slate.

Continue reading ‘AMPAS in Africa, Part Two: Nairobi’

AMPAS in Africa, Part One—Kakuma

September 5, 2011 in John’s Bailiwick
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Early on the morning of July 13, a United Nations World Food Program turbojet takes off from Nairobi  airport. The twice a week flight ferries supplies and passengers to the Kakuma refugee camp in northwestern Kenya. A group of eight filmmakers from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ International Outreach program is on board, headed by Phil Alden Robinson and Academy Director of Exhibitions and Special Events, Ellen Harrington. Actress Alfre Woodard is in the group, as are Carol and me. We are already midway through the first week of  film workshops and seminars in Nairobi sponsored by “Ginger Ink” and Tom Tykwer’s “One Fine Day.” Today, we are visiting this remote camp of more than 70,000 refugees from Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia, sited on an arid plain near the Sudan/Ethiopia border. We have come at the invitation of Liz Manne, executive director of FilmAid, an NGO that, among many programs, provides outdoor mobile screenings to East African refugee camp residents in Kenya and other communities in need around the world.

After landing on the unpaved runway, a jeep drive through the township of Kakuma leads to the entrance of the refugee camp, the gates of the UN compound and the offices of FilmAid.

Kakuma township, outside the camp perimeter.

Continue reading ‘AMPAS in Africa, Part One—Kakuma’