HER | Story: wambui waweru on finding a new stride and story
Wambui Waweru’s place with NEWF is easily not always easily defined. A tangle of creativity moving swiftly and slowly as at once, her role is to offer an inspired, value-aligned narrative structure to the NEWF Story Lab programs; to develop and refine curricula, and work closely with cohorts to develop stories, craft shooting scripts, offer insightful feedback and contribute to the collective learning that inevitably accompanies the marketing and distribution phase of films. But what positions this talented and poised Kenyan writer, voice artist and mother to harness a nuanced, almost delicate dance of navigating NEWF’s growing catalogue of African films, redefining the lens through which Africa is seen? It certainly is not hot, defining terms like frameworks and curricula.
How many African photographers and cinematographers have the opportunity to film wildlife off the continent?
While diversity and inclusion across industries that include arts, culture, entertainment and film have been a fervent topic-turned-movement, we are a long way from close comparisons to the sheer volume of foreign talent building their careers on bodies of work produced on the African continent. For Peter Ndung’u from Kenya, the ancestors aligned time and place in such a way that a recommendation from a peer, and an already acquired VISA for a trip to see his wife Ruth (an academic in residency in Austria) led to an opportunity to join the Gulo Film Production crew led by Oliver Goetzl on assignment for four weeks in the snow in Eastern Finland.