Wonder Woman of the Week: Wanuri Kahiu
This week's Wonder Woman is a filmmaker creating a new future for East Africa where women and the LGBTQ community continue to face harassment and discrimination. Wanuri Kahiu is a Kenyan filmmaker challenging the traditional discriminatory culture in East Africa by making films centered around women and LGBT characters navigating the world around them. Her first film From A Whisper explores the role of women in the War on Terror by following a woman after a fictional terrorist attack on a US embassy in Kenya. Her second film explores the future of East Africa as a film in the Afro-futurism genre of African sci-fi.
Wanuri Kahiu filmed a biopic about the historical figure Wangari Maathai- African's first femal Nobel Prize winner before creating an even more challenging film. In Rafiki, Kahiu tells the story of a lesbian couple in an extremely prejudiced Kenya- where the film was banned from showing. But being banned in her own country didn't stop Kahiu from earning a standing ovation when the film premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. Kahiu continues to make films exploring the Afro-futurist genre and is also a critic of non-government organizations who stereotype Africans as "others" by funding films about disease and self-destruction in order to reinforce ideas of African barbarism to international audiences. Fortunately Kahiu and filmmakers like her are changing the landscape for films set in Africa by creating a future for the continent to become a prominent base for movie making.
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