HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY TO SEE A REAL LIVE MERMAID?
In an idyllic fishing village off the coast of Kenya, BABU, a poor but ambitious fisherman, ensnares TALIYA, a mermaid-like water spirit, in stolen nets.
Unable to get his 'three wishes' (or is it five) as told in the village's stories of old, Babu decides to exploit Taliya as a grand magical theatrical exhibit instead.
He employs the Village Storyteller to help sell his story to the masses, and soon comes to conflict with the Chief's Son and a White Missionary Priest, who wish to end his act.
But Taliya herself just wants to go home and so must effect her own plan, using Babu's own MAL-FORMED eight-year-old son as a crucial part of her exit strategy.
INSPIRATION
It is difficult to pin-point an exact moment in time when the idea for Taliya was born. There have been several influences, both internally and externally. I have been surrounded by story all my life. Some of my earliest memories are actually stories I read or had been told, so I knew, from a very young age, that I was going to tell stories. I knew I was going to write.
I went to college to study economics so that I could earn a living doing economics or something, and then spend those earnings on living experiences that would fuel my writing hobby. That was the plan. I hadn’t really considered a career in the arts. It wasn’t even a thought. I was brought up, like most members of my generation in Kenya, to think of standard professional jobs – doctor, lawyer, accountant – as career-worthy. Pursuing economics was rebellious in its own way!
And suddenly I find that I have meandered away from the question somewhat. But therein lies the joy of Story!
Anyway, in college I took an introduction to film class. On a whim. And I was home. There was nothing else I was going to do now. Nothing else I could do. And then a funny thing happened; I realized just how much studying of film I had done prior to that class. I grew up very close to a remarkable video rental store whose owner was more than happy to steeply discount my rental fees out of our joint love for films. So I had watched a lot! A lot! So much so that I would, over several lunchtime breaks, narrate entire films to my friends in school who had less access to them than I did, channeling my ancestors in this way, playing the Village Storyteller to my schoolmates and keeping alive our Oral Narrative tradition.
Another magical thing happened in this film class, and this, I suppose, is a thing that happens to all of us: when one opens one’s mind to a new possible reality, things start converging around that possibility. So it was with me in that class. I opened my mind to a new possible reality, to a new future as a filmmaker and suddenly, where there had been none, now there were hundreds of future film ideas.
I think Taliya was one of those early ones, probably influenced by Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, which was released in that year, 2006, and which stunned me to the core of my being.
But the idea has been refined since, shaped by my own journey back home, given form particularly by my first visit to my parent’s home in Malindi, at the Coast of Kenya, said Coast being where Taliya is set. We were reacquainting ourselves – parents and last-born child – and I rediscovered my mother’s strong sense of the supernatural. She was convinced that her next-door neighbor had married a djinn. We argued, of course. I, for practical reason and science, she for magic. And she won. But only because I met her neighbor's wife soon after that and was completely enchanted by her, despite the fact that she was Mswahili and was covered head to foot in a hijab. Her hazel-green eyes, I will confess here, were bewitching.
But that’s a story for another day.
Suffice it to say, that experience set me off proper towards the making of this movie - a journey that has taken close to ten years to fulfil, during which time my experiences in the Kenyan Film Industry, and in my country and continent at large – joys and frustrations all – have embedded themselves into my psyche and, consequently, into this movie.
Whew!
That’s long! Not entirely sure if this long-winded personal origin story is sufficient answer to the question of inspiration. Apparently even this simple question requires myth-telling. But some questions only have answers in story form. A lot of questions, actually. Important questions. Philosophical existential ethical questions. I think. My desire is for Taliya to entertain us by raising some of these universal questions, which, hopefully, concern us all.
ON WRITING
Two stories are told in parallel within the film.
The first is the one we follow visually – Babu’s encounter with, and subsequent enslavement of, a water spirit.
The second, about the origin of our world and the place of water spirits in it, is told to Babu’s son by his caretaker, Mama Pendo, and to various audiences by our Village Storyteller, Chiriku.
This narrative style felt important for two reasons.
One, context: the two stories contrast and complement each other, enriching each other and expanding the world beyond the 2 hours or so of the film, giving a profound history to the comings and goings of our characters, and alluding to an enduring future of these people and the place in which they live, which in turn adds (historic and futuristic) weight to the significance of our characters’ present-day actions.
Two, it is a physical representation of our oral traditional style of storytelling & entertainment on which the movie itself is modelled.
I am very concerned with what I like to call our erased history, and this is basically everything that we (Kenyans, Africans) were before colonialism. Our national histories are new things and still very much tied to the colonizers that wrote them into being. But who were we before? What were we?
For me, calling back the oral narrative tradition is to invoke the spirits of those forgotten ancestors. It is an attempt to find a style or language that will accommodate their contributions to storytelling. This is likely a life-long pre-occupation.
THE SCREENPLAY
CAST & CHARACTERS
I am not the biggest fan of symbolism. I feel like any reference outside the story takes away the magic of the story itself. That being said, is it even possible to get away from symbols? Everything references something else in one way or another anyway, no?
Also, this is a fable, and fables are allegorical, which means they are symbolic, built almost from the ground up with symbols.
So, then…
Maina Olwenya
(Nairobi Half-life, Poacher, Stories of Our Lives)
as
BABU
This is the Swahili word for Grandfather. And so our protagonist is thus: The grandfather of our tale. The widowed king of his house. But he is, in reality, a poor fisherman – poor in skill and therefore poor in wealth. This space between his own reality and the fantasy in his head is the setting of our story. Like all men, his ambition is to make his fantasy real. Like a lot of men, he might not care too much (or at all) about whom he hurts along the way. His son’s mal-formed frame is the needle that keeps pricking at his ballooning fantasy.
Mwajuma Belle
(Poacher, What's On Your Mind, Ni Sisi, Phoenix)
as
TALIYA
Which means 'young girl' in Arabic/Swahili. She is a child brought forth into our world, birthed into slavery as it were. Innocent, confused and afraid, at first, she makes a quick study of human beings, and applies that knowledge back, bettering the instruction.
Brian Ogola
(Lusala, Poacher,18 Hrs)
as
JABARI
The Swahili/ Arabic for fearless, for rock-steady strength. For Jabari, our dauntless warrior, this is what it is all about. Strength. Hovering on the edges of the village and of this story, is a bloody guerrilla war waged between forces of the government and rebel forces. Jabari means to make a name for himself in this war, just as his father did, fighting for the liberation of the country from colonial occupation.
Joseph Omari
(Supa Modo, Ras Star, Backlash)
as
MZEE SANTI
Santiago, the Old Man by the Sea. (Here is symbolic overdrive. I couldn’t help it…. Sigh!). This is a man suffering from a deep loss of manhood. Both literally and figuratively. What wretched thing is left after such a loss? But here, with Taliya, is an opportunity for healing and restoration.
Caxton Osozi Kichamu
as
CHIRIKU
Is a noisy finch. A chatterbox. As the Village Storyteller, he relies on his gift of the gab to eat. He is the jester at the court of kings. He is ambitious as well and would love more money and a grander stage than the makeshift one he has at the market center. But he is also sensitive to the pain of others, having already endured so much because of his condition. Albinism, in this superstitious land, is of the ‘devil’ and must be rooted out, or nipped at the bud.
Teresa Omina Shikolio
as
MAMA PENDO
Her name literally translates to Mother of Love. This is what she gives to Obi. What no-one has ever given him. Love.
Richard Rollier
as
FATHER JOHN
is another (shameless) symbol. Of the white missionary priests. Of the first white settlers. The first to degrade and denigrate our traditions. The first to kill our gods and erase our histories. The name John isn’t just a generic white name but is in fact the name of some of the earliest white missionaries to Kenya: Johannes Rebmann & John Ludwig Kraft.
and
introducing
Charbel Ngeti
as
OBI
is the Igbo name given to the central, most important building in the compound. It is the heart of the home. A neglected one in this story, but still very important, still very central. Obi, as a character, is similar to Taliya. Innocent and Naïve. But he is also resilient, having survived ridicule and spite all his life, the bulk of it coming from his own father.
CREW
Written & Directed by Arnold Mwanjila
Produced by Joseph Gathogo & Arnold Mwanjila
Director of Photography: Eric Gichanga
Editor: Ricky M. Mwaura
Production Design by Kevin Amwoma
Casting by Kieran Ratanya "Popo" & Joseph Gathogo
Unit Production Manager: Tabitha Kongoine
Make-up & SPFX: Annerose Wamuyu
FILM INFORMATION
Title
T A L I Y A
Genre
Dark Fantasy Drama
Language
Kiswahili
Country of Production
Kenya
Production
Media Hub Africa (K) Ltd
Release Date
February 2021 - New Filmmakers LA - In focus: Black Cinema
Running Time
118 minutes
Aspect Ratio
1.85:1
Format
4K
AN INTERVIEW
This was a great conversation with Jackson M'vunganyi on his show UP FRONT for VOICE OF AMERICA. We touched on the rise of African Film-making, on Netflix's impact on the continent, on working through the pandemic and what type of stories to expect as a result, on the Black Lives Matter movement and Hollywood's push for diversity (and what that means for us, if anything), and, of course, we talked about TALIYA.
ANOTHER INTERVIEW
This time with the great Danny De Lillo from NFMLA. A fantastic more in-depth conversation about TALIYA.
