The film industry in Kenya has been in a state of disarray for a long time. Back in the day, we had films like Saikati and Dangerous Affair, and it was a bewildering fact that Kenya was able to produce feature length films.
Soon the government gave us the Kenya Film Commission and Riverwood was born, which was basically a punch thrown in the ever ensuing fight for superiority against emerging film markets across Africa, namely Nollywood and Bongowood, and the world, namely Bollywood.
More recently however, devolution in Kenya gave us a new kind of film market; a political cinematic arena, namely Machawood. The current Machakos county governor Dr Alfred N. Mutua introduced a local cinematic department into his government, and sank millions of taxpayer shillings into the endeavor.
The idea was to generate over a hundred million shillings a year in county revenue. Of course he was just reeling from the success of his local TV show Kobra Squad, which had gave him something of a cult following.
However, MCAs from Machakos county have been skeptic of the department, which has been receiving allocated budgets with no feasible profits to speak of to counter the blowback, the department recently organized a short film festival dubbed Machakos Fest, which was a competition with the winner taking home a million shillings.
A source inside the office revealed that the department CEO got on the phone and called his former film buddies from Riverwood, and invited them to partake of the grand prize, having already pre-selected the winners.
The crux of the plan, however, was to invite filmmakers from all over East Africa, and promise them a jab at the winnings, while making them sign copyright wavers of their films, and later using these films as their own productions, to prove that the department is in effect operational.
Speaking to a number of those who delivered films for the competition, they said they were promised a fair competition, and later to have their films air on national TV.
Promises they say have yet to be delivered. An office delivering a script for the masses, not just a script for the screen.