The Barua Brothers: Jakub and Stan

Debate has raged in Kenya since August 8, 2003 when Tourism and Information Minister Raphael Tuju announced that local television and radio stations would from January 1, 2004 be required to broadcast a minimum 20 and 30 percent, respectively, of 'local content.' While the Media Owners Association (MOA) and Kenya Union of Journalists (KUJ) have opposed the move, artists and players in the independent audiovisual sector have thrown their weight behind the minister. MOA Chairman and chief executive officer of Nation Media Group, Wilfred Kiboro, argues that the minister's move is "a slap in the face of liberalisation" and claims that the quota rule could force television stations to close down due to the high cost of producing local programmes. why should any one be concerned about 'local' productions?

Tuju, a former broadcaster and television producer who holds a Master's degree in Communications, explains the requirement is meant "to ensure Kenyans enjoy a part of the income that is inherent in the frequency spectrum which is a national resource." "Rather than build Kenya," Tuju contends, "foreign programmes rob Kenyans of their jobs." Perhaps nothing illustrates the minister's point better than the plight of the gifted Barua Brothers.

Film director Jakub Barua and cinematographer Stan Barua may have made more films and won more awards than any other Kenyan but they are little known (nay, ignored) at home to the extent they have to earn a living abroad. The apathy of television broadcasters to local content is partly to blame for this. "My being based abroad is partly due to attitudes to the local film and television fraternity," says Stan Barua from his Canadian base. "I certainly did not get the opportunity to practise my profession adequately at home." Indeed a newly published study on television in East Africa, Reshaping Television Broadcasting in East Africa, reveals that 14 out of the 16 television stations surveyed allocate between 60 and 100 per cent of their airtime to 'foreign content'.

The ship Muniri built

Despite liberalisation of the media in East Africa and the increase in the number of television stations, notes principal researcher Mauri Yambo, independent filmmakers have not benefited as foreign content continues to rule the airwaves. The survey was conducted by the Nairobi-based Development Through Media of filmmaker Dommie Yambo-Odotte.

Since 1995 when they first came to the national limelight following the screening of five of their short films as part of Nairobi's Centenary of Cinema Celebrations, the Barua Brothers have continued to make films. And an avalanche of awards has come the way of the siblings who trained at the world famous Polish National Film, Television, and Theatre Academy at Lodz whose alumni include Academy Award-winning Roman Polanski and Andrzej Wajda. In fact, Jakub's film, Taking Action, has just won the Vest Documentary Award at the 6th African Cine Week of Nairobi. Will local television station take note and bring back 35-year-old Barua from his Polish base? With Jakub scripting and directing and 38-year-old Stan rolling the camera, the brothers are receiving wide recognition and acclaim for their work globally except in Kenya where foreign content is still pervasive on the screens and where local independent filmmakers must pay stations to have their productions aired. The talented siblings were in the news in March 2003 during a film tribute to JAM Karanja, another talented filmmaker whose full length was only seen upon his death.

Forgotten Places, the first 35 mm film to be made in Kiswahili and that has earned the siblings first prizes for film directing and cinematography at prestigious world film festival circuits, was screened.

This documentary feature with English subtitles tackling the history and myths of the Kenyan coast, was researched, scripted and directed by Jakub with Stan on the camera. Till then, this film had been screened across the world except in Kenya. Scholars of Swahili culture and literature are likely to benefit immensely from it. The Cavalier, another of their creations, has received acclaim at other festivals. But this success has not given them any leverage with local television stations and the talented brothers remain largely unknown at home.

Shades of Poland

The elder Barua was admitted to the Canadian Society of Cinematographers as an associate member in 1999 and confirmed for full membership three years later. Baba's House, a 30-minute drama written and directed by Shandi Mitchell that Barua filmed, has received six awards and two GEMINI nominations. "Two of the awards and one of the GEMINI nominations were for my cinematography," Stan Barua says. "One of these awards was the Eastman Kodak Cinematography Award, from WorldFest International Film Festival, Houston, USA." The film also won the Golden Sheaf Award at the Yorktown Short Film Festival for Best Cinematography.

Raisn' Kane, a 72-minute film, also earned Stan the Best Canadian Documentary Award at Reel World Film Festival in 2001. Journey to Justice, a 47-minute documentary on Black Civil Rights in the 1930s and 1950s in Canada, was screened in Canada during the celebration of the Black History Month in 2001. Talk Mogadishu, a documentary directed by Canada's Judy Jackson and filmed by Stan Barua in Canada, Somalia and Kenya, will be broadcast throughout Canada on December 4, 2003. Barua has also completed filming Unlocking the past, a Canadian/British documentary series directed by British director Harriet Smith and shot around the world. It will be aired world-wide.

Frequent collaborators, the filmmaking brothers worked together on Shades of Poland, a feature documentary commissioned by Poland's TVP Channel One on the historical links between Poland, Africa and their Diaspora. It spans 1000 years.

However, the Barua siblings have quickly learnt from experience that winning awards is not everything in Kenya where foreign content has colonised African screens. Jakub and Stan work in Poland and Canada, respectively. They just cannot make a living in Kenya. Their homeland! Perhaps they have leant that patriotism alone cannot put 'ugali and sukumawiki' on the table, pay rent and send children to school. JAM Karanja, who attended the school they later went to and chose to return home despite invitations by German producers to work in Berlin, died in 2002 without anything to show for his talent. He had opted to return home believing his mission was to help build the local audiovisual sector. He ended up on the peripheries, doing odd jobs to support himself and his family.

Sao Gamba now prefers painting to film directing.

Although disabled, Karanja, through hard work, determination and aggressive character, had broken myths and misconceptions by becoming one of the few disabled film directors in the world. His two films-Born in chains, The trap-- were shown in Kenya posthumously after being flown in from archives in Poland for the first anniversary marking his death in March 2003. It was at this Tribute to JAM Karanja film evening, sponsored by the Polish Embassy, that Kenyans were awestruck by the quality of Karanja's work. Karanja's talent notwithstanding, he never made a single feature film at home as he was elbowed out. Friends had to raise money for educating his children upon his death. The curtain may have come down on film director Karanja but the struggle for entrenching local film in the Kenyan national milieu remains.

Through their associations--Kenya Film and Television Professional Association (KFTPA), Kenya National Film Association (KNFA), African Cine Week of Nairobi, and the Union of National Radio and Television Organisation of Africa (URTNA)-players in the audiovisual sector in Kenya are lobbying authorities to ensure that the plight of Karanja never befalls another Kenyan. "Since local broadcasters don't believe in local productions," argues Albert Wandago of ALWAN Communication, "the government is duty-bound to ensure they do not discriminate against local filmmakers while using frequencies allocated to Kenya and the goodwill of Kenyans. " Wandago contends broadcasting local programmes will help create some of the 500,000 jobs per year that the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) government promised Kenyans.

"There is no way the media can assist in creating employment if they insist on using cheap foreign programmes," he says, adding that over the three months he made his latest feature film-Naliaka is going-his production created 200 part-time jobs. "More local TV content will translate into more jobs for the three million unemployed youth in this country." Wandago believes the issues of availability and quality of local programmes do not arise as the audiovisual fraternity has the capacity to deliver the 20 percent quota of local programming. In fact, he says, "The minister should have started with at least 30 percent quota of local content."

Sao Gamba, another Kenyan filmmaker who trained at Lodz like the Barua Brothers and the late Karanja, has retreated out of the limelight after having made Kolormask,the first local feature film by a Kenyan. After graduating in 1971, Gamba went to Uganda before returning to Kenya in 1973 to work with the then Voice of Kenya Television where he made 25 documentaries. He then joined the defunct Kenya Film Corporation where, he says, "I struggled for four years trying to convince the directors of the corporation that Africans could make films." Then, he says, the corporation's work was merely to distribute films and did not see how black Africans could make quality audiovisual products.

Eventually, Kolormask was made. And then Gamba disappeared. "I could not make people understand what filmmaking is all about as this is an investment that does not bring in money immediately. At times you may not even get anything out of it," he says. Gamba now paints and carves what he terms "spiritualism art." B y working abroad, could the Barua Brothers be fighting what befell their compatriots Gamba and Karanja? But how did the Baruas get into filmmaking? Jakub says their interest was initially in the arts in general. That his elder brother Stan and he got into music at a very early age. While Stan played the violin, he was interested in the trumpet. Also having taken to painting and photography almost simultaneously, they settled on film as, Jakub says, "it is the one art that brings all the arts together."

It was while at St Mary's School in Nairobi that Jakub's interest in literature and history was honed. Feeling that literature was a powerful tool for propping up the human spirit, Jakub says he applied to universities in the United Kingdom after Advanced Level studies and was accepted at the University of Warwick for film and literature studies. Indeed Barua employs his literary skills well in Forgotten places, marrying action with storytelling, imagination, myths and legends in driving forward the plot. The plot of Forgotten places goes something like this: Once upon a time people lived happily in a coastal town. Then, there were no water masses-lakes, seas, oceans-but people drew their water from a well in the centre of town. Later, Majini (ghosts) connived in misleading the king to charge users for the water they consumed. This he did and soon the wealth generated went into building a beautiful golden city. But God was unhappy that a natural resource should be misused.

Like in the biblical story of the Great Flood, Muniri-like Noah-- listened to voices in his sleep instructing him to build a boat in the shape of a half moon. As he built the boat on dry land, he was laughed at and derided by residents of the Golden City. As soon as the boat was ready, God caused the water in the well to ferment and to overflow covering the whole city and earth. Only Muniri was saved in the wooden boat and thus became the first sailor.

The film also seeks to explain the presence of ruins-Gedi, Mambrui, Kongo Mosque-- at the Kenya coast. Haji Alhaji narrates the events in almost flawless Kiswahili as he writes a letter to one of his descendants aboard a ship explaining how the sailing career began. Barua, who says he makes "slightly provocative documentaries, recalls he has had people coming up to him after a screening Forgotten places and asking him where they can find more literature on the legend of Muniri and the ship. "I always tell them there is no such legend and that I made it up, basing it on the myth of the Great Flood," he says.

"Myths did not appear out of the blue but someone sat down somewhere and created them. I tried an experiment with this myth. I researched all the versions of the myth of the flood and discovered the Yoruba, the Persians and even the Chinese have it," he says. The film-- shot at the old Mombasa port, Kongo Mosque, Jumba la Mtwana, Mtwapa and Watamu, Gedi Ruins, Malindi, Mambrui cemetery, the open Indian Ocean--also explains the meaning of the boabab and why coastal people do not build their houses close to beach fronts.

"The baobab symbolises sacred places, dwelling places of the spirits," he says. "Look at all the beach front properties at the coast; why are they not owned by the locals? Villages were never set up right near the beach but two kilometers inland leaving the coastal strip open and when non-Mijikenda came they could say there was no one there." Forgotten places is a film that operates on many levels simultaneously; it is a wistful tale of a lone sailor at sea writing a letter to a young seaman sharing unspoken secrets about the way life began at the coast which is the way he believes all life began.

By using a native Kiswahili speaker, Barua says he wanted to enhance the authenticity of the film. "I used someone whose father was a sailor and whose grandfather was a shipwright for whom the craft of shipbuilding was an exacting art handed down for centuries from one generation to another," he says. Forgotten places, Barua says, "Is a lyrical script based on the universal myth found in practically all human cultures." Stan's sharp cinematography accentuates Jakub's poetic Kiswahilli. The soundtrack includes Giryama flutes, harps and drums playing Jakub's compositions and Western "mood" music conceived jointly by Jakub and Polish composer Martya Broczkowski.

How does director Barua describe his films? "The audience consider my films to be lyrical and poetical; even my documentaries are not straight docus, but reveal my emotions, my angle, my interpretations," he says. Barua has done many short dramas and documentaries including The cavalier, Glory, No proof, Candlelit landscape, Wherever, No limits, and Shades of Poland. "I have also directed musicals and live concerts in Europe," he says.

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