Type - Short Fiction
Genre - NGO project, cultural, drama-ish … I honestly find this hard to categorise …
On to review number 3 -Sibini (2014). I don’t review NGO projects, being a die-hard indie filmmaker myself, but this one time I’ll make an exception for the sake of future good filmmaking.
Watching this film felt like taking the best athletes in the world, tying up their legs with iron chains, then telling them to perform as well as they usually do … A solid script is probably what held this short film from crumbling to pieces (thanks again Alex Ikawah), that and the amazing talent that is Paul Ogola who safely ferried this hackneyed production to completion. The cinematography was pretty decent too (thanks Likarion) but that’s just about it regarding what was good in this film. From poor character development to incongruent scene transitions to unnecessarily dragged-out spasms of dialogue, this film was a train-wreck. I may be too harsh probably because I value creativity over large donor budgets, but if you do not agree with me search for the film online and watch it yourself, it should be somewhere on the Global Dialogues (peeps who funded it) website, I realized they took it down from YouTube.
On the flip side, this is the dilemma faced by many Kenyan filmmakers - balancing between creative freedom and sponsor requirements. To be fair to the Sibini film team, they were working to stuff their creative juices to fit themes into what a donor wanted them to translate through film - an uphill task that usually ends up as a rendition of the myth of sisyphus (okay I now realise how that will not be funny to those who do not know the Albert Camus book, which is like 90% of Kenyans). Anyhow, I can’t say more about this film (because there’s nothing to say), I urge you to watch it though.
Rating - 2/5 stars
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Review by Robert Mũnũku
You are indeed too harsh :-)
ReplyDeleteI guess there's a thin line between 'harsh' & 'honest' :-)
DeletePlease do share your film reviews as well (both local & foreign films) & we can host them here ...