Film on Kenya’s first female lacrosse team set for local screening

Cinematographer Timothy Mwaura didn’t even know the producer of his recent film, Sleeping Warrior had entered him in a global competition for best documentary cinematographer. So when Nina Ruiz phoned him in Malindi where he was working on his latest film project for the EU, he was initially stunned, then elated and finally overwhelmed with the notion of winning anything.

“That [international] award is the first that I’ve ever won,” Mwaura told Life&Style. But he was promptly corrected by his wife Vale who reminded him he had received special mentions for his cinematography both in ‘WAZI? FM’ and the 2016 documentary about epilepsy entitled Subira. And at this year’s Kalasha Film Market, he won the documentary pitch for his film project, ‘Nairobi by Night,’ about street children and sex workers.

Then Nina further reminded of his past life as an award-winning spoken word poet, when filmmaking hadn’t even crossed his mind.

Globe trotter

“Back then, we were part of WAPI? an arts project funded by the British Council,” recalls the man whose winning words had taken him all the way from Denmark to Zimbabwe and Japan.

But Mwaura soon understood that winning prizes in poetry wouldn’t provide him a sustainable livelihood. “I realised that just as I was taking my second trip to Denmark,” he says. With that in mind, he decided to hold onto the stipend his sponsors gave him for his stay in their country.

“I saved it all and before I left Copenhagen, I used those funds to buy myself a Canon 70 camera including one battery,” he adds.

That humble Canon is nothing like the Red Epic Dragon that he now owns and which he says is what most Hollywood cinematographers use. But even with his Canon, Mwaura was determined to become the best cinematographer that he could be. And now, he has begun to fulfill that dream as Sleeping Warrior, the documentary film about the making of Kenya’s first female LaCrosse team, is winning awards right and left, including the one he just got from the European Cinematography Association based in Holland.

“We have already received awards from film festival in Toronto, Chicago, Houston, and just this today, (May 24) we heard we won at the Cannes World Film Festival,” says Nina proudly.

It was serendipity that got her and her filmmaking partner Janet Wells together with Mwaura. “It all happened from London where both Janet and I are based,” says Nina who heard about him from a friend who had met him in Kenya. They called him on the spot and explained their plan. Their friend was heading to Western Kenya to recruit and train the country’s first female LaCrosse team. They wanted their film to capture that transformational process, focused on its impact on the young women’s lives.

“I had been to Kenya several times before. But having a sporty background myself, I was intrigued with the idea of filming the actual process of starting from scratch and getting those girls all the way to the 2019 Women’s World LaCrosse Championship in Peterborough, Canada,” says Nina.

“They didn’t win, but they were the first team from Africa to reach the championship, and the crowd loved them,” adds Janet.

Wanted the backstories

But winning wasn’t the point of the film. “We wanted to get the back-stories of the girls. And that is what Tim was so good at,” says Nina who focused specifically on three young women whose desperate lives have been transformed by being on the team.

Sharon, Maureen, and Maclean all have heart-wrenching stories that have left nary a viewer of the film with a dry eye, according to Janet. “All came from dire situations,” adds Nina who with Janet has set up an Education Fund to assist these girls with school fees and enable them all to get to university.

As for Mwaura, his training in filmmaking is what he describes as being ‘self-taught.’ Yet he adds that he’s had excellent film coaches first with Chris King, whose film ‘The Letter’, made with his singer-filmmaker wife Maia, had been up for an Academy Award in Hollywood. He also learned a great deal from Jared Rehm helping him make the film ‘Sarakasi’. So by the time he met Nina and Janet, he had already been making doc films for everyone from the ILO and UNICEF to CARE and FAO.

“I initially thought I was making a sports film, but soon I realised Sleeping Warrior was about the personal lives of these strong, but vulnerable young women,” says Mwaura.

‘Sleeping Warrior’ will be screened in Nairobi at Westgate Mall on June 1.