From Vioja Mahakamani to Daktari March 2018 | Page 27

Simale revolves around the lives of two graduates who have fallen in love, but cultural differences make it difficult for them. Scripted by Mucheru and translated into Borana by Liban Liban (who plays the role of Wario in the movie), Simale aims at promoting cultural tolerance in the community which continues to grapple with problems such as lack of empowerment for the girl child among others. “In the movie we featured 42 cast. Out of them, only one had appeared before a camera. The others were new, but they performed prodigiously. In fact, one very old illiterate man who is one of the actors, would be read the lines by the co-producer and internalise them before acting,” says Mucheru. After the Borana movie, the initiative is in the final stages of actualising another locally-acted movie that will be cast in Dholuo. The movie, Piny Agounda, will be staged in Kisumu. It loosely translates to ‘what goes around comes around’. The initiative has been able to spread wings to neighbouring Tanzania where they conducted such training in 2017 for local filmmakers. The training lasted for two weeks and before they left Tanzania, they were “It was a depiction of unutilised talent.” The initiative would hire homes and other facilities to help shoot the movie. Coincidentally, they hired the home of two of the actors who were sisters sent away from school for fees arrears. Through the payment they got from the initiative and the rental fees paid, the girls were able to go back to school. Mucheru would learn of it after the girls had returned to school, when their mother came to thank him. 27 able to shoot two movies, Laiti and Ndoto Yangu. Later, the Tanzanian government would send two trainees to Kenya for further training by Media Vision. The initiative, in conjunction with the Tanzanian Film Federation, is jointly producing a film that will feature East African actors. Apart from the local partners, Media Vision is collaborating with Canon Japan to offer capacity building through training of trainers (ToT), technical capacity building in terms