Do you watch television commercials
and look at ads on billboards and in print? Then one
man influences your consumer choices more than you can
tell.
That man is Martin Munyua,
a former field mechanic who is causing ripples in the
advertising industry in Kenya. His "Fresh Freddy" toothpaste
commercial grabbed more awards than anyone can remember
at the recently concluded APA Awards in Nairobi.
If you watch television for
at least an hour daily, you can't miss to see at least
six commercials in whose creation Munyua has participated.
They range from food flavour enhancers to chewing gums,
detergents, pain killers and even beer, cellular phones,
AIDS awareness and tourism promotion.
Conceding that there are some
boring commercials on Kenyan television, the filmmaker
who speaks English, Italian, Bulgarian, Spanish and Kiswahili,
vows to change this.
Munyua, who has come a long
way from his days as a field mechanic specialising in
agricultural equipment in Bulgaria (1988-89), has not
confined himself to editing and producing commercials.
He works as a cameraman for television news, documentaries,
and feature films.
Among the documentaries he
has worked on includes those on religious cults, women
circumcision, HIV/AIDS awareness, and peace and reconcilliation.
Versatile
Munyua on location.during the making of I Dreamed of
Africa
Munyua has also worked on "
I Dreamed of Africa " and " To Walk with Lions" features
shot in Kenya.
From the above experience,
Munyua and his wife Alice have established Cineafrica
Productions to help make films with African themes.
Their first socio-cultural
production will be out next year (2002). He says the
company is identifying local talent, tapping and nurturing
it through a one-year internship programme for college
graduates.
Munyua attended St. Mary's
School, Nairobi and Ruiru Secondary School before he
left Kenya on a mechanic engineering scholarship in
Bulgaria in 1988.
Determined to get to film school,
he dropped out of the engineer class after a year and
ran to Italy to study film although he did not know
where the fees would come from. He had to live and pay
his tuition from his proceeds as a butchery cleaner,
restaurant dish washer and cook!
As if luck was on his
side, Munyua was soon offered a job as an assistant cameraman
for a firm which not only retained him for the five years
he was in college but exposed him to news gathering. By
the time he graduated in 1995 he already had four years
of practical experience, he says.
Two years later, he graduated
with a master's degree in social communications and
came straight to Kenya where he has been in the audiovisual
industry since 1997.
He says the audiovisual
sector in Kenya is not yet saturated and that the competition
is therefore not as stiff as in the West.
