The Kenya Film Commission takes this opportunity to pay tribute to a veteran film maker who was recently awarded a prestigious OBE by Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom.

Alan Root, a Kenyan citizen and arguably the world's top wildlife film maker of all time was amongst those awarded the O.B.E in Her Majesty the Queen's birthday honors, 2008.

Alan started filming in his teens and was encouraged to become a film maker by Armand Denis - a pioneer in the field who spent many years in Kenya.

Alan's first film on jacanas won 2 gold medals, and he then filmed for Armand Denis for the BBC TV series "On Safari" in the mid 1950s. He was then recommended as a cameraman for "Serengeti shall not Die" in 1958, to replace Bernard Grzimek's son Michael who had been killed in a plane crash. The film won an Oscar for "best documentary", when Alan was just 21 years old.

He continued his career making films for Survival Anglia, BBC and National Geographic, picking up award after award, and his film on the Galapagos Islands "The Enchanted Isles", presented by Prince Philip, was the first British-produced wildlife film to air in the USA. His film "Castles of Clay" was nominated for an Oscar in 1977. He has received "Lifetime Achievement" awards at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, the Wildscreen Film Festival, and the New York Environmental Film Festival, has won a Peabody and two Emmy awards, along with many "best of festival" awards and countless others.

Alan, a director of Viewfinders EPZ Ltd. filmed gorilla sequences for the feature "Gorillas in the Mist" in 1987 and made a series of films in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1990s. He recently spent two years in the Serengeti getting wildlife footage for a Hollywood feature being made about Bernard Grzimek. And has been Executive Producer for many younger film makers, including Mark Deeble and Victoria Stone, whose "Queen of Trees" which was shown in Nairobi at the end of 2007 won a Peabody award.

Congratulations Alan Root!

In a show of its commitment towards developing the Kenyan film maker’s capacity and expanding regional ties, the Commission gave an opportunity to nine film makers to attend the Amakula Film Festival held in Kampala, Uganda in May.

The Commission felt it would be a good idea to put the film makers in one bus to Kampala in order to create an opportunity for them to bond on their journey to Amakula.

The fare and per diem cost for each film maker was covered by the Commission.

The film makers returned with good reports about the festival and gratitude to the Commission for facilitating this trip for them.

The list of film makers was as follows:

Mburu Kimani, one of the film makers who attended the festival writes:

“Amakula film festival is one of the most interesting film events in East Africa. Through the presentations, workshops and meet the people sessions, I had a revealing experience of how film makers are making and distributing their movies in Africa.

I also got the chance to watch movies from other film makers and got to understand the kind of challenges they face in their day to day work.

We also got the chance to elect members to the committee which will lobby for filmmakers in East Africa. At the moment, film is making good strides in the East African region and Africa as a whole and the way forward is co- producing with each other hence widening the market.

Through the Commission, we as film makers had an eye opening experience and for that I am very grateful.”

The head of the Kenyan delegation to Amakula, Charles Asiba, who is also the Kenya International Film Festival Director, had this to say about Amakula:

"Film is one of the means to show who you are in the outside world. Governments are the best partners because they have the money and they will give you the funds without strings attached. And if we constantly lobby them they will come on board. The role of government in cinema is to allow people to express themselves in form of cinema to do with cultural understating. Because cinema is a very powerful tool in explaining our cultural diversities. I believe if Kenyans had understood each other's cultural differences and beliefs the magnitude of the recent election violence would not have been that high. We are actually afraid to know each other because knowing that such and such a group does this and that, we will not call each other primitive. We have not been able to address our cultures since independence because colonialism was all
about suppressing our own cultures."

The Commission is committed to ensuring that more opportunities of this nature are accorded to film makers in order to extend regional co-operation within the East African community’s filming fraternity.

The young talented film maker Wanuri Kahiu has something else in store for local audiences. Following the success of RAS STAR, Wanuri’s passion to produce another amazing story has borne fruit in the form of “From a Whisper”.

Based on the events surrounding the August 7th bomb blast, the film which was written and directed by Wanuri is bound to touch the lives of Kenyans across the board and go down in history as the only film that has documented this historical event.

Wanuri’s production house, Dada Productions are currently in the post production stages of the film and they expect to launch it on the 7th of August 2008, in commemoration of the August 7th bomb blast that killed hundreds and changed thousands of lives.

Shot in 15 days, it took the producer and her assistants, a period of about two months to prepare for the actual shooting of the film. Naturally, one of the locations was the August 7th Memorial park which captured the true essence of that day’s events.

The film features renowned Kenyan actors like Ken Ambani playing Abu; Abubakar Mwende playing Farid, Godffrey Odhiambo playing Sam and Corine playing Tamani.

In support of this production, the Commission provided office space to Dada Productions at a subsidized rate to act as a production base/auditions centre.