Hot Sun Films

On Wednesday I had a meeting with Chelina and the leaders of Power of Hope, Ushirika, YDF, and NNDC to organize Saturday’s clean-up at the second site. Although the meeting was scheduled to begin at 1, it was actually 2 before it got underway, and Bernard didn’t arrive until about 2:30. But eventually it happened, which is the way things work in Kibera.

After the meeting, Chelina took Aidan, Jean, and me on a tour of a part of Kibera we hadn’t visited before. Kibera is bisected by a railway line, which amazingly is functional despite the presence of stalls crowding just feet from the tracks. The tracks themselves serve as a thoroughfare for people and animals when no train is in site. On Wednesday, the first thing we did was to walk along the tracks, first to the site of a clean-up organized by several Chiefs of the districts of Kibera. We then continued west along the tracks to where part of Kibera is on higher ground than the district we work in. From here we could see all of Kibera spread out below us to the south – and a golf course adjacent to the north.

Eventually we ended up at the Olympic entrance to Kibera, where we stopped in at Hot Sun Film School. Hot Sun Films is a production company that has produced a short film, Kibera Kid, and a feature, Togetherness Supreme. Both are set in Kibera with a cast and crew made up primarily of Kibera residents. In addition, the founders of Hot Sun, Nathan and Mercy, run a film school which accepts students from Kibera who are interested in learning about filmmaking.

Although the students must be able to read and write proficiently in English, they are not required to have any formal education, and the school does not charge a fee. Funding for the school comes from Africalia, a Belgian group, and from private donors. We watched some of the student films which this year’s class has put together, and after only two months they show a lot of promise. According to Mercy some of the students did not even know how to use a computer mouse when they arrived at the school, but now they are writing, directing, starring in, and editing their own films quite adeptly. Hot Sun seems like a really interesting and worthwhile effort – especially since two of the eight or so members of last year’s class received jobs using their new skills immediately upon graduation.

If you are interested in checking it out, I think Kibera Kid is available online, although I haven't verified this. Some Hot Sun alumni have also launched Kibera TV, which posts 1-3 minute videos about life in Kibera online, which is accessible here.