Carmen Thompson
Published: 21 January 2019
My project is a comparative study of contemporary female documentary filmmakers in Kenya.
University of Edinburgh
My project is a comparative study of contemporary female documentary filmmakers in Kenya.
It focuses on three: Judy Kibinge, Zippy Kimundu and Philippa Ndisi-Herrmann, who will participate. Although the indigenous documentary industry in Kenya is still small, it has been dominated by women and there appears to have been no academic engagement with this unique phenomenon.
The project will explore intersectionality in the context of this documentary film production, analysing the ways in which female directors both probe and contribute to Kenya’s intangible cultural “image”. Specifically, it asks, what has attracted female directors in the country to documentary filmmaking, over other forms? To what extent “female subjectivity” shapes their filmmaking approach, and what other factors inform their chosen narratives? And, what can the visibility of female filmmakers and the impact of their female directorial voices tell us about how the genre of documentary is visualised/utilised in a Kenyan context?It will utilise a combination of qualitative methods including content analyses of films, secondary research on social/ political/historical production context and in-depth semi-structured interviews with filmmakers.
First published: 21 January 2019