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Two tenacious Kenyan women take on the mighty task of renovating Nairobi's historic library - but can they make a relic of empire relevant and accessible to 21st Century Kenyans?
Built in 1931, Nairobi’s grand McMillan Memorial Library was reserved exclusively for the use of White Europeans, and stayed that way until 1958. By 2017, it has become delapidated and underused, when a pair of intrepid and passionate book-lovers, Shiro and Wachuka, embark on a major modernisation and decolonisation project.
Energised by an ambitious vision of transforming the library into a vibrant cultural hub, Shiro and Wachuka set about bringing the collection, and the library itself, up to date. Along the way, they must navigate local politics, raise millions for the rebuild, win over staff resistant to change and confront the lingering ghosts of Kenya’s colonial past.
The screening on Monday the 27th of October was followed by a Q&A with co-directors Maia Lekow & Christopher King. Hosted by filmmaker Zinha Morgan-Bennett.
The screening will be Open Captioned and a British Sign Language interpreter will be visible on stage throughout the Q&A.
In this joint curation between Bertha DocHouse and Sheffield DocFest, audiences are invited to discover the gems, highlights and new voices in non-fiction cinema which premiered in the past festival edition.