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KENNY'S FILMS

THE SWAHILI BEAT

The History of the East African Coast as told through Local Music and Dance

​THE SWAHILI BEAT is an upbeat look at the remarkable history of the Swahili people of Kenya and Tanzania’s  East African coast. Packed with the music and dance of the Swahili and other indigenous coastal peoples, the film takes viewers from the fabled island of Lamu off the northern coast of Kenya to Zanzibar, Mombasa,  Kilwa, Bagamoyo and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.  The film traces the development of the Swahili culture through the intermarriage of Arab settlers, arriving from Oman in the 8th century, with local Africans.

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    The resulting Afro-Arab Islamic hybrid culture cemented economic and social stability and fueled the emergence of the Swahili as prosperous merchant brokers in the Indian Ocean basin and in the growing East African slave trade.  This made them a lucrative target for successive waves of settlers, invaders and colonizers, including the Persians, Portuguese, Arabs, Germans and British.  THE SWAHILI BEAT examines the impact of these invaders, and asks whether the Swahili, who have successfully absorbed a variety of cultural influences, can maintain their traditional culture in the face of globalization and the Internet.

BEAUTIFUL TREE - SEVERED ROOTS

    A one-hour documentary film in color and black-and-white, shot in Kenya, Poland, Romania, Israel and the United States over a period of eleven years.  The film is a personal exploration of and inquiry into my own identity, narrated by myself in the style of a detective unraveling a mystery. The shooting medium is MiniDV and HD.  Exhibition format will be DVD and/or other formats, depending on distribution media platforms and outlets.

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On one level, this film is about how my parents’ Judeo-Socialist background prepared them for their extraordinary lives and achievements as refugee immigrants to Kenya during World War II.  On another level, it is about living multiple lives as a white woman in an African country; an Eastern European in a British Colony; an anti-colonist in a colonial colony; and a Jew who didn’t know how to be Jewish.  It is about the evils of colonization and the loss of indigenous cultures, including my own. 

 

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Drawings by my mother, Erica Mann, that document her and her husband Igor's journey from a refugee camp in Palestine by British troop ship to another camp in then N. Rhodesia.

    Against the backdrop of Kenya’s journey toward liberation from British rule - from the Mau Mau freedom-fighters of the 1950s to the euphoria of Independence in 1963 - so I too began the journey towards self.  On a family level, the film is an exploration of our deep and everlasting identification with Africa and African people and the notion of “tribe.”  On a universal level, it is about identity, place, displacement, loss, remembering, forgetting, assimilating, not assimilating, belonging, not belonging, documenting.  It is about the concept of home and the idea of self, and the many selves that could have been mine – including the one that I currently do – or don’t - claim. It is about roots, seeds and branches.

WALKING WITH LIFE

THE BIRTH OF A HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN AFRICA

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    Punctuated by the songs of a griot or oral historian, this film – shot entirely on location in Senegal - pulses to the dramatic beat of traditional theatre, music and dance. These tools are used by Tostan, an award-winning NGO, to help people discover their human rights and the meaning of democracy. Their new learning inspires participants to re-examine ancient customs, such as female genital cutting and forced early marriage. Health and hygiene, community resources, environmental issues, discrimination, citizenship and girls’ education are all scrutinized through the lens of human rights.

 

    As positive social changes sweep the country, the people of Senegal rejoice in triumph. Whisked from the placid villages of the Casamance to the harsh desert of the Fouta and the teeming streets of Dakar, viewers are eye-witnesses to the empowerment of people through human rights education.
 

All my films have been shown at various film festivals, including the San Diego Black Film Festival, the Zanzibar International Film Festival, the Documentary Film Festival in Sag Harbor, Storymoja Festival in Nairobi, Clearwater Film Festival, and many other locations.  

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My short films include SURRENDER, shot on Sagg Main Beach, NY, which was broadcast on the Independent Film Channel for three years.  POWER PLAY was produced while I was working for a film production company in Hamburg and screened online.

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Kenny Mann   rafIki productions   19 Espira Court   Santa Fe   NM   87508

646 479-5884

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