Insightful 56th Lola Kenya Film Forum Held
The 56th successive Lola Kenya Screen Film Forum took place this past Monday, 21st May 2012 at the Goethe Institut, bringing together a select group of people in the local film production industry to a discussion platform aimed at critiquing, encouraging and exploring ways of integrating film production in Kenya and Eastern Africa.
This month’s forum had a record number of over 40 attendees including friends and supporters of Lola Kenya Film Festival such as Filmakers Ibrahim Chelanga and Betty Caplan. Lola Kenya seeks to merge socio-cultural and economic sectors in order to come up with a vibrant film industry for not just the country but the region.
Ordinarily, short films from Eastern Africa are watched and discussed, ideas exchanged and the opportunity to network given, every last Monday of the month. This forum, an audiovisual event, is often one of the first places where new films can be seen and young talent spotted, as over the years over 100 films have been shown including Wanuri Kahiu’s film Just a Band: The Movie, which was recently shortlisted for the Hot Docs Festival in Canada.
Click here to read more about the Hot Docs Festival
At the edition, movies screened and discussed were ROCK SCENE (about Rock music in Kenya) and SPORTING WITH A PURPOSE (about a football foundation in Kiambu county set up to help improve the lives of teenagers). The moderator for the evening was Cecilia Wangare, a final year film production student at Multi-Media University in Nairobi, Kenya.
Attendants to the Lola Kenya Forum (PHOTO: Lola Kenya)
To guarantee quality in its service delivery, Lola Kenya have become members of the International Centre of Film for Children and Young People (CIFEJ) that was founded in 1955 under the auspices of UNESCO and UNICEF to promote excellence in cinema for children and young people. They are also members of the global Kids For Kids Festival (KFKF) community of filmmakers and educators that promotes audiovisual media content created by children for children.
For the 7th annual Lola Kenya Screen festival (LKSF) scheduled for the 6th to the 11th of August 2012, more than 300 entries have been received from countries such as Bulgaria, Australia, UK, South Africa, Philippines, Switzerland, Finland, USA, Croatia, The Netherlands, Turkey, Italy, Poland, Spain, Germany, Burkina Faso, France, Kenya, Egypt, Palestine, Slovakia, Ghana, Canada, and Venezuela. The films shall go through our usual film selection process and the festival line-up announced in early June 2012.
The next Lola Kenya Screen Film Forum will be held on Friday the 25th of May 2012 at the Goethe Institute. If you’re interested in attending, contact the director at:
