KENYAN FILM WITH MORE THAN 18 MILLION VIEWS ON YOUTUBE

3/5/2016

by Mark Wambui - RECA

As I did my daily youtube scavenging looking for a bit of how to do this here, replaying Justin's Purpose album and clicking on whatever caught my attention. I ran into a title "Kenyan Top Movie" looking at it closely I was shocked at the number of views, a whooping 18,558,922. Eager to find out which kenyan movie has such views that I didn't know about I immediately clicked on it and to my surprise it was merely a trailer... Yes... A trailer about a man and woman who are stuck in a toilet where things get steamy as they work through their tribal prejudices. As you may have guessed by now, it's the trailer to Malooned a 2007 film by one of Kenya's top film directors, Mr. Bob Nyanja

The film, Malooned, is a romantic drama about two people from different tribes who have to resolve their prejudices when they become locked in a washroom. In 2007 it won two awards at the Zanzibar Film Festival and secured a $2.5m deal international release signed with Pretty Pictures International.

Talking to the BBC in 2007, Mr Nyanja hoped that the movie would foster a spirit of reconciliation among Kenyans and get them out of their prejudiced toilets and work as a nation. Something that did not happen due to our 2007 to 2008 post election violence. I did however wonder if the film would have had this reconciling results if more Kenyans would have watched it before casting their votes.

Sadly I have also not watched the film, I would love to, and though we have come a long way in our film industry we are still struggling with the two critical issues Finance and Distribution, something Bob was still grappling with 9 years ago. I wonder if his figured it out by now... hmmm

We believe RECA will be able to tackle these and many more issues we are facing change by bringing filmmakers from the continent together and providing tools that will enhance the results of their dialogue.
Before I go, the Trailer is being hosted under a random youtube channel and the comments section is not where you want to go but with 18 million views Mr Bob would have minted quite a bit of money from Youtube AD revenues... An important discussion for my next article.

sources: BBC