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Filmmakers have also received the blunt side of the Covid-19 crisis. Since the government prohibited huge gatherings in order to arrest the virus surge, it spelt doom for the industry, a thing that has reduced the players into beggars. And as Allan Adalla writes, there’s no end in sight to the misery just yet.

The cinema industry is amongst the most affected sectors of the economy by the coronavirus pandemic.

Late last year, the industry players thought that things would run normally after the government announced a limit of 100 people in social gatherings; also by observing strict Covid-19 control measures including regular hand washing or sanitising, social distancing and putting on face masks.

This got many filmmakers to wake from the lull to organise film premieres and stage plays with heavy investment.

However, the statement by President Uhuru Kenyatta on March 26, this year, served as a bombshell to the industry again, since all public gatherings and in-person meetings were banned until further notice.

Kisumu-based filmmaker Robbie Odongo was among the filmmakers that counted big losses out of the embargo on social meetings.

Robbie had scheduled to launch his film Bangarang on April 2, but he was left with no option but to postpone that exercise to unknown time in future.

“We pumped a huge amount of money, especially on marketing the launch. I had planned to clear all the loans I had borrowed for marketing the movie through the revenue I expected to get from the tickets.

So, I had to borrow from a shylock since convincing a bank to lend you this type of loan may not be easy.

I was so frustrated and didn’t know what to do after I heard about the announcement by the president.

As a law-abiding citizen, I had no option but to suspend the event. The biggest challenge was servicing these loans.

I used precarious ways to pay back the loans, which was maturing at a fast rate,” he intimates to Spice.

Luckily, the production of the movie, which consumed more than Sh5 million, was financed by the Kenya Film Commission (KFC) after winning the best proposal on the first phase of the KFC’s Film Empowerment Programme in 2020.

Its launch was to be held in Nairobi and Kisumu where it was filmed. The movie was inspired by the story of the late Baby Pendo who died in the 2017 post-election skirmishes in Kisumu.

Robbie says even if the president allows things to move normally, he will have to start everything from scratch.

“Marketing is the most crucial thing in a film; it has to be robust and so, when we set a new date for launching the premiere, we will have to start everything afresh including marketing and engaging the distributors,” he says.

The industry has for sure come a long way. The earliest film shot in Kenya was Roosevelt in Africa, a documentary account of former US President Teddy Roosevelt’s visit to Kenya in 1909.

Recorded by Cherry Keaton, the film documents Roosevelt’s trip across what is today Kenya and some parts of Uganda.

The Rise and Fall of Iddi Amin, starring Joseph Olita and produced in 1981 by Sharad Patel, was a breakthrough to the Kenyan film industry, as the film won five international awards, including Best Actor at the Las Vegas International Film Festival.

Treacherous journey 

Whilst the number of films shot in the country has increased in recent years, the country lacks enough financial resources and investment needed to produce large-scale feature films.

However, KFC’s established in 2005 has promised to solve this through promoting the industry not only within the country, but also to raise international awareness and interest from potential investors.

Phil Bresson, a film director and creative, also got his filming project cut short when the heart-wrecking announcement by Uhuru was made.

At the time, Phil and his team were in the middle of producing a high-budget TV advertisement.

The following weekend, they were to launch the travelling campaign to some parts of the country, but this turned into a nightmare, as some parts of the country were put under partial lockdown and the dusk-to-dawn curfew announced to start at 7pm.

Phil intimates that through Covid-19, people have learnt the importance of entertainment.

“In the beginning, we were impacted and people felt like arts, music and movies were not that important.

But as time went by after getting tired of staying at home, they realised how impactful entertainment is.

You can see now every politician is trying to look at how they can interact with the artistes since they have come to note that these people have influence and winning the public through them is effortless.

There is a realisation that entertainment is critical for the economy to run, but they are not doing anything to come up with policies that support the art, ” he says.

After the hit by the pandemic, film director and a scriptwriter at Liquid Arts and Entertainment Peter Tosh, who fully depended on entertainment as his main source of income, had to think outside the box and got into the business of selling clothes.

According to him, he was set for his play-cum-movie premiere, but the pressure of paying loans and returning the tickets money to the audience that had purchased advance tickets online was outrageous. So, he had to stream Tapeli online.

“We were all set to do the play at the Kenya National Theatre. We had booked the room, costumes and sold quite a number of tickets.

Therefore, we could not fail to do the play, but online platforms were the way to go, ” he says.

For Tosh, he feels that going online was the only way to recover the losses they were to incur when the physical gatherings were suspended. Though their audience base shrank.

“Going online was a big challenge as well since the number of the audience that paid to watch reduced significantly.

People enjoy watching premiers and plays live more than mobile devices or TV.

We are still going to do them online, as it is the only way we can afford to do it,” he says.

Commercially wrong

However, Zippy Okoth, a film director and an art lecturer at Kenyatta University, is against the idea of streaming movie premieres virtually since it is through the sale of tickets that the filmmakers make profits.

Zippy and her team had four movies scheduled to launch between April and June.

“Not all movies go to Netflix and Showmax since we don’t have enough distributors.

The only way to make money here at first is through the premieres. It was better when the president had announced a gathering to have 200 people.

At least if a premiere could air three times, one could pay for space and get some profit.

“Theatre is different to music where you can share your track on YouTube. Then for a movie, one gets satisfied by just watching it once unlike music, which you can watch or listen to as many times as you want,” she says.

In her 15 years in the cinema industry, Zippy says that she has seen movies make a big impact on society and so, she is of the school of thought that the government should start sponsoring films to help people learn more about Covid.

She says, “When you stop art from being performed, then you cannot stop the crisis since people listen to art more than news.

Why don’t we use art to drive this message to curb the spread of the pandemic?

The government should support movies that educate about coronavirus since theatre is the imitation of life, so we should encourage it.”

Phil adds that through the status quo, he has learnt that creatives need to diversify on different businesses.

“We should look for other ways to survive other than depending on one thing. Or else, depression will be the next thing.

The government should also realise that the film industry has a lot of money,” says the film director, adding that the government should also ban international ads or tax them heavily to give chance to the local content.

“Many people depend on the cinema industry including the cast and crew, make-up artists, caterers and those doing costumes.

It is quite sad that they are now rendered jobless. We hope that after more people are vaccinated we will get the chance to go back on stage and bring back the smiles that our audience have been missing,” says Tosh in conclusion.