By Bethsheba achitsa
Published August 8, 2009
Download: Lola Kenya Screen 2009 film programme
Lola Kenya Screen, eastern Africa’s premier film festival for children and youth opens at Goethe-Institut, Nairobi, on August 10, 2009 at 9.00am. However, the official opening ceremony is to be held at 5.00pm the same day.
KIRIKOU ET LA SORCIÉRE (Kirikou and the Sorceress), a 74-minute feature film inspired by West African fairy tales and directed by Michel Ocelot, will set the pace of the annual event. And the Nairobi audience will hear not French but Kiswahili, a language widely spoken in eastern and southern Africa.
During the opening ceremony, Norway-based Irish filmmaker David Kinsella, whose film ‘A BEAUTIFUL TRAGEDY’ officially opens the Lola Kenya Screen at 5.pm, shall be present as shall be Hilde Steenssens, coordinator of Filmfestival filem’on of Brussels, Belgium.
The 2009 edition will exhibit the best possible international films for children, youth and family in three sessions over the six days of the festival alongside training children and youth in film-making, creative journalism, film judging, events organisation and presentation. The festival will also train adults in creating TV drama for children and youth.
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The various skill-development programmes will be facilitated by internationally-acclaimed media experts, including Rut Gomez Sobrino and Fina Sensada-Boixader of Spain and Anette Tony Hansen of Denmark.
Lola Kenya Screen 2009 shall host the first Eastern Africa Independent Producers workshop, a three-day conference with the objective of helping develop favourable independent audiovisual media policies for Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Eastern Congo-Kinshasa, Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia. It is conducted with the support of UNESCO.
The festival shall also host a photo exhibition, “Hands that Heal” Humanitarian Photos in Africa”, that will form the basis of discussion on the importance of humanitarian-social audiovisual media in Africa.
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Established in October 2005, Lola Kenya Screen is an award-winning initiative that seeks to explore, identify and nurture the creative talents among children and youth in Eastern Africa. Thus the objectives of the Lola Kenya Screen mentorship programmes are to equip children and youth with the skills to understand, appreciate and create quality audiovisual media productions in particular, and arts in general.
