Nominees for the Kalasha Film and Television Awards 2015

An air of great expectation and curiosity filled the I-MAX amphitheatre as filmmakers waited for the nomination list for the Kalasha Film and Television Awards 2015 to be announced.

It was largely expected that Fundi-mentals, a sex comedy released early this year, would carry the day. That was not the case. Although the feature film went home with four nominations, it failed to claim all the ‘Big Five’ nods: Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Feature and Best Picture.

The Historia Films-production garnered just the Best Feature nomination out of the five. Other categories it was nominated for included Best Supporting Actor (Charles Karumi), Best Special Effects and Best Lighting Technician.

What the makers of this production did not understand is how they could be nominated in international awards for the same film and not bag a nomination in Kenya in these categories.

Gerald Langiri, who played the main role in the star-studded film, had been previously nominated in the Best Actor in a Comedy category at the Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards (AMVCA) this year. He was also nominated at the Nigerian Entertainment Awards (NEA) in the Best Actor of the Year category. Fundi-mentals director Alex Konstantaras won Best Director of the Year Award at the NEA.

“Frankly, we expected to get a nomination for Best Actor and Best Actress. Florence Nduta, the main actress, pulled off a great performance while Gerald got two nominations and competed with filmmakers in Africa. It is a big surprise to me that we can get recognition internationally for our work and we cannot get it here,” Alex said.

Alex informed us that he believed Fundi-mentals got the nomination for Special Effects for three scenes in the film where they employed virtual tricks. And although he is impressed that their effort got noticed, he felt that it was not the strongest element in the film.

“I am happy for the nominations. I am proud that we got recognised in both performance and technical aspects of the film. I am still surprised that we got nominated for Special Effects, we were strong in that category but I feel that we were strongest in others that we did not get nominated for,” he says.

A good number of short films landed nominations in some of the same categories as feature films. For instance in the Best Feature category, Veve and Fundi-mentals, two feature films that stood out, were battling against three short films.

For Alex, it poses the question whether it is fair for a feature film that is at least 60 minutes long, to compete in the same category with a short film lasting a maximum of 25 minutes. Filmmaker Brian Munene garnered a total of 17 nominations from his three short films Before and After, Letters Home and The Audition.

“We do not have as many feature films in Kenya. Cutting off short films because of length would be unfair. We do the best with what we have and I do not think it is length that matters but what we put into our work,” he expresses.

When we spoke to Brian two months ago during the call for submissions, he told us that he would petition the Academy to change the time stipulation for short films. According to him, he felt that the length of short films could be less than 12 minutes and that requirement that they be above 12 minutes shut out many well-produced short films.

“I wrote a petition letter to two board members and the Academy and told them that internationally, short films run for as little as three minutes and that their above 12-minute requirement would lock out many entries.

I think they saw the logic because if I had not petitioned, we would have fewer entries. For a festival of this magnitude, we should have more entries,” Brian says.

The Real Househelps of Kawangware and Hapa Kule News both aired in KTN also landed nominations. The former has a nomination for Best Lead Actor in a TV Drama (David Marucha) and Best Lead Actress in a TV Drama (Aisha Noor) with the latter nominated for Best TV Comedy. Other popular TV programmes that gained nominations were Pendo, Sumu, Auntie Boss, Groove Theory and Pray and Prey.

The newly-branded Kalasha International Film and TV Festival is set to kick of later this month, from October 26-30. This year’s Kalasha sees a new twist with the festival going from a one-night event to a full week affair.

The Kalasha Film and Television Awards is a part of a week-long festival. The festival will include the Kalasha Eastern Africa Film and TV Trade Show, which intends to attract stakeholders in the film industry across nine countries.

The Kalasha International Film Festival will consequently take place across Nairobi, Mombasa, Eldoret, Kisumu, Nyeri and Malindi for film screenings in major theatres and venues. During the week-long festival, actors, producers, post-producers, distributors, boradcasters and advertisers will get to engage in workshops and discussions to push the Kenyan film industry to new heights.

For Brian Munene, it is all about getting films distributed to the market. He laments that there is lack of distribution for short films and thus short productions do not reach to a wider fan base.

“If we had a Kenyan version of Netflix ot would really help the film industry here. Other than Kenya Movie Night held at Prestige Plaza, we do not have any other platform that helps to showcase our works.

We have amazing films but getting someone who has presence on all TV stations to sell our work or getting content producers to work with us is a challenge,” he says.