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During this year’s Kalasha Awards, The Cleansing, a short film by a relatively unknown name in the industry, carried the day, beating other films like Before and After, Sibini, Letters Home and No Behaviour.
The Cleansing won the Best Short Film at the Kalasha Awards.
Owino Sang’iewa, the man behind it, is not known in film circles, despite being big in the advertising world.
In fact, you could say that in the last 20 years or so, Sang’iewa who describes himself as a content creator, has amassed quite the impressive résumé.
As a producer in advertising, he has been part of the team in advertising campaigns including; the Kencell launch, the localisation of pampers ad, Guinness, Malter, Pilsner as well as Tusker.
It is also worth noting that Sang’iewa did not get any formal training in production or in advertising.
He learnt on the job.
In fact, after leaving Maranda High School, where he sat his A-levels, he got a job at a bank which did not sit well with him.
He left after five years and for the next 10 years, he travelled the world: he lived in India, the US and UK in the late 1990s when he discovered his passion for advertising.
So how did he move from doing advertisements to films?
“About four years ago, I began to feel restless, unsatisfied and in need of a change. I left my job and moved to Bondo. For a year, I did absolutely nothing and just re-energised and evaluated my life. Although I am now back to work, having started my own consultancy as a content creator, the time away helped me to write, something that I have always loved to do. I strongly believe in telling stories about culture and in that spirit, the script for The Cleansing was born.
Owino explains that the film deals with the problem of how to continue observing cultural and traditional practices in the face of modern-day lifestyles and attitudes.
He submitted his screenplay to Maisha Film Lab (MFL), Kenyan Screenwriting Workshop in January 2015 and “as a result of submitting my script, I was invited to attend an eight-day workshop. Out of 15 finalists, my screen play was selected as the winning script and I was awarded a grant of about Sh200,000. We shot the film in Kinoo for two days and I worked with Simiyu Barasa, Peggy Mbiyu and Benson Kamau,” explains Sang’iewa.
The Cleansing tells the story of Nyar Usonga, a pretty, but arrogant 25-year-old village widow who needs to undergo traditional sexual cleansing rites (ter) to rid her of the impurities ascribed to her due to the death of her husband.
But because of the risk of infection with the Aids virus, she refuses to do it without the use of a condom; which is against the traditions and she turns down several suitors.
Harun, her father-in-law is a firm traditionalist and attributes all the ills and misfortunes of the village to her unclean and cursed condition, eventually giving her an ultimatum: get cleansed the traditional way or get gone.
By morning Nyar Usonga, not being a very socially adept individual, finds that the solution to her problem is not so easy to find, but instead comes from the most unlikely source.
But question the remains whether she can summon the courage and wits to make it work?
Additionally, apart from Kalasha, Sang’iewa has also submitted his film at the International African Film Festival and the International Short Film of Cyprus. He is currently working on a new script for his first feature-length film.
“I am currently working on a new script which I intend to submit to different festivals all over the world. I have found that it is the best way to get funding for my film projects, so hopefully, if everything goes well, I should have another film next year,” concludes Sang’iewa.
