Cinema Culture in Kenya and Why We Must Win the Goodwill of the Audience

What exactly am I referring to by the word ‘culture’? Webster defines it as the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group. Now, prefix ‘cinema’ onto that, and we have a general outline of this editorial argument. What beliefs about cinema does the common Kenyan hold, if any? What social forms does this entertainment phenomenon take? What material gain have we, Kenya, got from cinema as a whole? Allow me to take you through my perspective of this topic, and by this, all being my opinion, my verdicts as well, compounded with the opinions of industry professionals such as Reuben Odanga and Philip Karanja, who have achieved recent significant milestones with their film projects in cinemas. Are we really on the right path? Also, what cinema culture does the international community enjoy compared to ours? Are cinemas generally in the business of good films and stories, or are they in the business of hype?

The history

To answer some of those questions, especially about being on the right path or not, one must first have a firm understanding of our history. I would start at the beginning for Kenya, before it even went by that name. According to available records, the first documentary ever produced (hey, another beginning birthed in Kenya) was of American President Theodore Roosevelt hunting big game within these borders, Roosevelt in Africa (1910). It was shot by a British wildlife photographer called Cherry Keaton. Why is this important? Because it tells us of the very first interest the international community had with our country vis a vis shooting of film. And it still fascinates them; long miles of NatGeo footage are shot here in Africa. They can’t damn well take all the buffaloes and elephants away, but they can take images of their President lording it over the equatorial habitat with one foot over a dead animal.

Then, in 1935, a most shameless program called the Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment (BEKE) was formed for the sole purpose of screening films that would reorient the Bantu people in the high-ways British culture and lifestyle. It was disbanded in 1939, though the seeds were already planted to come and bite them in the back. Certain Mau Mau members could’ve been disaffected by the Brit’s blatant propaganda, and subsequently rose up two decades later and ran them all off. Ah, such is the oxymoronic power of film. Some of these films, though, were positively educational, touching on subjects like hygiene and agriculture. A few Hollywood productions were shot within Kenya’s beautiful landscape too: John Ford’s Mogambo (1953), John Huston’s The African Queen (1950), and even the film adaptation of Hemingway’s The Snows of Mount Kilimanjaro (1952) starring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner.

According to Githinji, K. W. (2020) in her paper The Role of Film Policies in the Growth of Kenya’s Film Industry: Case Study of Film and Stage Act – Cap 222, it was in 1981 that the Film Production Department, renamed the Department of Film Services, was formed. Today, it is known as the Kenya Film Classification Board (KFCB). Here is where it might’ve all gone to hell. Due to the Film and Stage Plays Act enacted in Parliament in 1962, the board’s mandate was to handle film classification, business registrations, and the issuing of filming licences to exhibitors. Much like the rampant land grabbing after the imperialists were kicked out, boards were formed in government branches for the express purpose of wealth generation. This is how, even today, we have some of the costliest filming licences in the world.

In the late 80s, filmmakers like Ann Mungai were among the first Kenyans to produce narrative feature films, like the popular Saikati (1992). Talents like hers may have suffered for coming too early in the history of her own place. Kenyans had more pressing issues back then than going to the cinemas. A few people may have seen it, but not many.

I would say that the country matured enough to support an industry like this, economically, from both the producers of films and the population, in the 2010s. This development sadly coincided with the latest of Hollywood’s big-movie idea periods: the intellectual property (IP) cinematic universes. I’m talking about Marvel, the Fast series, DC, some horror franchises, etc. The movies weren’t dying before this, but this movement did raise Hollywood’s returns exponentially. This is due to several factors like tapping into international markets, tapping into the kids’ market with popular comic book IP, and creating hype around their releases. These movies often come with the feeling of, ‘If you miss this on the big screen, you might as well live under a rock.’

Let’s face it: the number one commodity in cinema and television isn’t stories anymore; it’s hype.

Where we are today

Very rarely do movies outside of IP make very much money, like more than $ 400 million at the international box office. In fact, this century, so far, has produced most of the highest grossing movies of all time. Mostly IP. People are more willing than ever to go to the cinema but they need a certain pull to get them there. According to Statista, Kenya contributes, on average, $ 4 million a year at the international box office. I reckon if that cash were being funnelled back into our own film industry, we could grow exponentially in less than a decade. But this cash goes back to the movie studios and distributors abroad and the theatre chains who exhibit them.

Well then, how much money do our own movies make?

This quest presents a problem because there’s still no actual way to know for sure. We are not a transparent industry, deeply lacking crucial information and data to accurately quantify successes or failures that can help us forge a better tomorrow. No one shares information on film budgets, earnings, losses etc, so it’s never quite clear if a Kenyan film made profits in cinemas or not. How, then, are upcoming and future filmmakers supposed to learn their way around this? How are we supposed to build a culture and prestige around cinema and win the audience when we don’t even have the data to begin to quantify whatever we have been doing for the past decades?

In 2021, there was talk by the Kenya Film Commission (KFC) of opening a ‘film industry satellite account’ (whatever that means), which would somehow assist in evaluating the film industry’s contribution to the country’s overall GDP. A survey was conducted in 2022 but we haven’t received any conclusive data since. I stand corrected if that report exists and I just haven’t bumped on it yet. But, as I said, we are an industry criminally lacking in data and information sharing. Of course, one could argue that many Hollywood movie studios are owned by giant conglomerates that are often publicly traded in various stock exchanges; thus, they are legally required to share their financial information with the public. It helps any industry to know what sells and what doesn’t; this movie made that much, now what? This data is far more important than any of us realise.

I’ve heard, along the grapevine, that some films purported as being ‘successful’ here don’t really make much money in so much as they win several awards. Personally, I’m a Nike over Adidas guy; checks over stripes. Awards are fun, but money is always better. We would all like to know how much cash is in circulation in this industry, how much our movies generate at the box office, and if possible, some tangible streaming data. Then decisive moves and amendments can be made to grow it. This has a lot of legal tentacles which any Kenyan in a government office worth their salt could grapple onto and make even messier if they are averse to the daunting workload and battles ahead that would be necessary in making this even remotely possible. But the fact of the matter is simple: transparency. It’ll make things a whole lot more realistic, and people would start to see the industry for what it really is, as it really is.

I only see Kenyan films showing in cinemas when they’re having some kind of launch or premiere. This is important to the creators of that content, for the red carpet photos if for nothing else. They run for maybe a week or two, or even just a day, before being replaced by the latest Warner Bros or Hindi release. Search what’s playing right now in any theatre in, say, Mumbai, and I guarantee you, outside the summer months, 90% of the films being screened are Indian productions. Closer to home, look at Nollywood cinemas, and you will always find Nigerian films screening in cinemas week-on-week. Why can’t the same happen in Kenya?

Drastic times, you know. Hollywood has been cashing our dollar for far too long. Take, for instance, China, the world’s largest film market and a critical one for Hollywood’s global box office revenue for years. But look at how they have managed to limit and control Hollywood’s dominance in favour of their own film industry, thus growing it to the extent that Chinese films now account for over 80% of China’s high box office earnings. Currently, 9 out of 10 highest-grossing films of all time in China are domestic films, with only Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame making the top 10. In fact, if you expand this list to the top 20, it’s still an impressive 19 out of 20. In an industry like China’s, rich culturally and financially, movie stars are movie stars. That’s because their faces are hardly streamed on Netflix or foreign streaming services; when they are seen, they’re seen twenty-feet-high, and if they are streamed from home, it’s mostly on homegrown platforms, keeping the money within the same borders.

In Kenya, have we sacrificed money for fame? No, we’re always chasing both. Our aforementioned film premieres usually have ticket prices starting at Ksh. 1,500, some even higher. It’s good to have respect for one’s own work, but it’s also important to be realistic. Ksh. 1,500 a ticket, throughout the only measly two-week (even less for most) theatrical run it will ever have, for a film, no matter how good, released by and in an industry that has yet to win the goodwill of the audience, borders on the delusional.

Most of the ticket buyers are usually family members and friends, the average citizen being oblivious to these films (marketing!) because they fundamentally lack what’s really sold in those halls: hype. We’ve complained about the quality of films in this country long enough. Even for pristinely produced films made abroad, we don’t go and see them unless they offer something more than just a story. We want hype and excitement and the promise of an experience. We want a ride. Even after offering us all of these on the opening day, tickets to movies from Hollywood studios rarely, if ever, reach Ksh. 1,500, not even if they’re three-hour epics. I saw Oppenheimer on the second weekend (without Barbie) in glorious 70 mm IMAX and paid Ksh. 1,000. That’s a three-hour Christopher Nolan picture, a proven genius. Regular tickets to regular movies, even on opening day, mostly cap at about Ksh. 800, depending on the theatre. So how can a local filmmaker ask us to pay that much, and often more, for a ticket? It’s an utter lack of perspective: you cannot overprice your commodity to a market you haven’t won over yet. It’s like a snake eating its tail.

I decided to ask a few filmmakers who’ve taken their films to cinemas, and the reason they give for such high ticket prices is the need to recoup their investment. I understand the filmmakers, and I understand the investors as well. They need to make their money back of course, and this tariff on tickets is the only way they can do it, apparently. They are given a limited running due to obligations and agreements these theatres have with foreign powers, namely the distributors, and they have to make their money back within that small window they are so lucky to be granted. This is why the tickets to local films are overpriced. Like I said, a snake eating its own tail here. The laws of business dictate that the market decides the price and value of a product, and since the product is so costly to produce, to break even while selling it at the standard market-price, what we need is a bigger market and a bigger marketplace. Our industry needs to win over the audience and take them to the theatres, but even more importantly, we need more theatres dedicated to Kenyan films.

Reuben Odanga, the director of Nafsi, tells me the film managed to squeeze in an eight-week theatrical run, the longest record in this country for a local film. He disagrees with me, though, about foreign movies sucking up the air for our own productions. “When we took Nafsi to the cinemas, they told me we wouldn’t make money because we opened the same day as Dune, but as a matter of fact, Dune dropped off and Nafsi was still running,” he says.

Odanga says, however, that Nafsi played in two cinemas for the first three weeks and then only one cinema for the remainder of its run. “The other cinemas had a bit of a red tape. Some of them have deals with other distributors, which makes getting in a little tough.”

As the middlemen between studios and cinemas, the interests of distributors lie in the most profitable films or those with potential profitability to generate higher fees. Nafsi had a premiere like any other Kenyan film: with high ticket prices. “We are selling exclusivity and an experience,” Odanga says, adding that after the first weekend, prices were similar to any other title at Ksh. 500 and so forth, depending on the theatre and time.

Cleophas Agwanda, the Marketing Manager at Anga Cinema at Diamond Plaza refutes the claims that cinemas are reluctant to screen local films. To be completely fair, most film premieres I have attended have been held at this Anga Cinema, so if there’s one brand that does support screening of local films, it’s this one. “The producers of the films have all the power and set the period they’d like their movie to run,” says Agwanda. “They run for such a limited time because theatre is slow-money accumulation; one has to be patient. But when the filmmakers pull them out and go to a streaming service like Netflix, they get a big chunk of money at once.”

According to Jotham Micah, the East African Marketing Manager for Century Pictures, a sister company to Century Cinemax Group of Cinemas, local filmmakers don’t plan their releases as well as they plan the production of their films. They make them for years and then walk up to him and ask it be shown ‘the next weekend’, he says. He wonders whether they really know how the exhibition part of the business works. 

He adds that the industry right now is a ‘wild wild west’, and he agrees with me about the absurd high premiere ticket prices for local films, and that the hype our movies generate isn’t enough to sustain them against the Hollywood marketing machine. “In this country, people bring in a lot of ego and don’t want to work together. In Hollywood, all the studios work together to ensure their movies don’t clash and split audiences,” Micah says.

The only way I see that Kenyans can affordably view themselves on the big screen and at the same time have the producers of these films make their money back, and if the film is even good or hyped enough—a bunch of profit—is to have some kind of regulation on this very byzantine internationally-reaching local industry. It is, and forever will be, inextricably linked to the cinema business. One way or another, we need government intervention.

Cinema tickets, in my opinion, should be going for even less than Ksh. 500. Make a loss for a few years. Why not? I wouldn’t be surprised if this method even generated profits instead of losses. Looking back in history, again, cinema grew into an international phenomenon due to it being a lower to middle class pastime. People would stroll into a movie theatre, watch twenty minutes of it, and if they didn’t like it they’d just walk out; it was only $0.60 anyway. It was like buying a lollipop. Nowadays, even if a movie offends you personally, you sit through it all and try to like it because it costs you something unrealistic. Simply put, our film industry needs to earn the goodwill of the people. Say, even if all the theatres started showing Kenyan films, the only thing that would happen is they’d go straight out of business. We need to refurbish our track record, and we can’t do that by acting like some primadonnas. Our other alternative is to build more cinema halls and establish a brand of theatres that caters exclusively to Kenyan films.

One of our biggest hits last year was the Philit Productions film Click Click Bang. With a budget of Ksh. 6 million, it grossed Ksh. 2.5 million in its opening weekend alone. That’s a mighty take. While I personally didn’t take too much to the film which I reviewed here, I applaud director Philip Karanja and his team on how they rolled out the project to the Kenyan audience.

Interestingly, for this opening weekend, Click Click Bang was screened in only one venue in Nairobi: Nairobi Cinema. “We went to several theatres, and in fact some that cater to the Indian population told us, ‘Your people don’t have a movie-going culture’,” Karanja reveals. Philit Productions managed to break even with Click Click Bang, and even made a little profit on it; but only just a little, according to Karanja. “Not as much as we expected,” he admits.

But if the film made Ksh 2.5 million in two days in only one venue with only two showings per day, imagine how much more it would have made in that opening weekend alone if more cinemas in Nairobi had faith in it and screened it. Click Click Bang’s profitability was right there, something the cinemas are always chasing. It was adapted from a YouTube episode of Abel Mutua’s popular story series, chosen by the fans, or as Karanja puts it, ‘the community,’ which was already popular. The social media interactions were insane, and even people who don’t keep up with movies kept asking me about it. There was hype! And only Nairobi Cinema for its opening weekend!

For the remainder of its run in Nairobi, Click Click Bang was screened at Century Cinemax at Junction Mall and Garden City for three weeks before Karanja and his team took it other cities like Nakuru and Eldoret. These guys at Philit may be ahead of their time. They really care. They know Kenya doesn’t begin and end with Nairobi. They wanted to screen the film in every corner of the country that could accommodate it, and this is how they were able to thrive last year, both financially and on the awards circuit as well. They had a giant presence. They had hype. However, in Nakuru, the film was shown at Lohana Hall, which isn’t, by any means, a traditional theatre. Tickets were sold at Ksh. 1,000. The point remains the same, again, that even outside of Nairobi, the only theatres that exist are the big chains, found in big malls, which are still beholden to the same contracts and agreements as the ones in Nairobi are. This is a national issue.

“One of the big problems our industry has is infrastructure,” Karanja says. “Do you know that there is not one cinema hall in the whole town of Nakuru?” I did not know that. There are also no cinema halls in places like Kitengela, Ngong, Githurai, and so many other areas in Kenya. Kenya, with a population of over 50 million people has only about 15 cinemas (some sources say 11) with less than 40 screens, and are mostly located in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu.

If I were the Kenya Film Commission, in my capacity to further the film industry, I would take legislation to parliament that would suggest, in so many words, that Hollywood ‘imports’ and all foreign films should be limited to a set number per year, with theatres having to exhibit Kenyan movies on at least 90% of their screens throughout the year. What would we be missing anyway? Blue Beetle? Again, in China, the government only allows a strict quota of 34 foreign films to be screened in a year, and look how wonderfully that has worked out for them. They’re a bigger country though, with more theatres and a larger population but you see the point. Here, we just take everything that’s offered as a wide release. The neglected revenue stream that is the theatres is the biggest problem the Kenyan film industry has today; number one. Going the China/India route might seem drastic to the short-sighted in the short-term, but what it will be understood to be in four to six years is self-preservation. Karanja wonders about the balance the whole industry would have if every county had just one dedicated cinema hall for Kenyan films – the alternative solution this piece offers. He would absolutely kill it in that environment.

“Yes, we need government intervention, but we haven’t given them any incentive to do so, in terms of tax and employment opportunities,” Odanga says. “We need to make commercially viable films, films for the audience. We make dark films that are aimed for festivals, heavily thematic, and most of them lack that entertainment angle. We don’t go to the cinema to be lectured.”

He sounds like literally any of my reviews. According to him, this could be due to the fact that films were introduced to us through NGOs, and were mostly educational. “This is where I think Philip Karanja and Abel Mutua have cracked that problem because they write for the audience. We need to make more commercially viable films, then in time, we can move into all these other things,” he says.

This year, the number of Kenyan feature films released theatrically so far is significantly lower compared to what had been released last year at the same time. There’s no doubt we have a volume problem. I always say everything is connected. If we could sort out our own filmmakers and fight for a model that will enable us, as the consumers of these films, to be able to support as many of them as our pockets and interests can, while at the same time enabling the filmmakers to not only make their money back but maybe even some profit; why, it seems obvious to me that more movies and shows would be made here. More content, which means more opportunities to go around, and maybe eventually an increase in the quality (both budgetary and critically) of our movies. Everything is connected, and it starts at the dishevelled marketplace. And the entire industry must band together for a working solution.

There have been some big disruptions to the cinema business. Mainly television in the 1950s, streaming in the 2010s, and most recently, in 2020, a real-life pandemic that shut down everything. Theatres were hit hard for obvious reasons, and along with the likes of aviation, it was among the most damaged industries. Tom Cruise could be labelled as the man who single-handedly saved cinemas when his fantastic movie, Top Gun Maverick, grossed over a billion dollars in the global box office; the theatre! Cinema never dies, or maybe, like a cat, it has nine lives; and if that’s the case it’s on its fourth or fifth. People will always want to go outside, which is why it strikes me as odd when our industry only focuses on streaming, gives it good and noble attention, yet completely ignores the theatres. What Hollywood is doing to us isn’t bad or illegal, it’s just called winning, because their product outsells our own in our very own backyard. But if there was ever a time to win over the market to our side and turn this and unlock the potential that we all know this industry has, it would be now.

Both Nafsi and Click Click Bang are available to stream on Netflix.