RP-Department of Theatre Arts and Film Technology
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Browsing RP-Department of Theatre Arts and Film Technology by Author "Mugubi, J."
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Item The aesthetics of children’s theatre: appreciating and maximizing on the psycho-social potentials for social and economic advancement(International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2011-06) Mugubi, J.Item The aesthetics of children’s theatre: Appreciating and maximizing on the psycho-social potentials for social and economic advancement(International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2011-06) Mugubi, J.Item Configuration of Kenya’s Children’s Television Drama(American Research Institute for Policy Development, 2014) Mugubi, J.Children’s film is an artistic genre in its own right with its distinctive character and utility in the society. Machachari is a local television drama that is centred on children. This episodic film, while revolving around slum children and their hustles and survival jaunts in the hard-edged lives of their surroundings, juxtaposes the ghetto children with their well-to-do friends. Just one year since this sitcom was first aired on a Kenyan Television station, Machachari recently won three awards: it was voted “Kenya’s Teenagers’ TV drama Soap of choice”. The TV drama also won “New Show Award” and one of the characters won the “Male Actor Award”. In the Kalasha awards held in September 2011, the equivalent of a Kenyan Oscar, one of the child characters, Baha, won the best actor award. In cognizance of the popularity of this sitcom and in appreciation of its palpable foregrounding of child characters, this study interrogates this very popular sitcom with a view to establishing whether the presentation of the child character with regard to behaviour patterns and theme conforms to true childhood as affirmed by three psychological theorists: cognitively, as prescribed by Jean Piaget; emotionally as outlined by Erik Erikson and lastly, whether the child characters’ conduct is the product of interactive influences, both congenital and experiential as delineated by Robert Sears. Discourse analysis is also employed to determine the communicative import of the utterances of the child characters while appraising their plausibility in illuminating particularities of children’s mental processes and personalities within their milieu.Item Delineation of National Healing and Conflict Resolution in Film: A Case Study of Kenya(American Research Institute for Policy Development, 2014) Mugubi, J.Wale Watu is a film by Cajetan Boy. This feature film was inspired by the post election chaos that followed the disputed 2007 elections in Kenya. The plot of Wale Watu orbits around two youths, Paul and Mercy. Coming from different, indeed, historically antagonistic ethnic communities (Mercy is a Kikuyu and Paul is a Luo), the two are in love and plan to get married. Whereas their parents have no qualms about the relationship and indeed live in harmony, the outcome of the elections marks a turning point. Chaos ensues, the two communities turn against each other. Paul’s father’s hospital is set on fire by furious Kikuyu youths, precipitating the demise of Paul’s paternal uncle, Mark, who is burnt to death inside the hospital set ablaze. Paul’s sister Safari escapes death narrowly but with severe injuries. Among the Kikuyu youths gone amok is Mercy’s brother, Robert. And when the truism that Paul’s Fiancée’s brother was one of the youths who participated in killing Paul’s uncle comes to the fore, Paul’s and Mercy’s wedding plans are thrown into disarray. Tension is palpable everywhereItem The Sociolingual Disposition of the Emergent Deejay Afro Film Commentary in Kenya(American Research Institute for Policy Development, 2014) Kimani, G.; Mugubi, J.The Kenyan film scene has experienced a descending trajectory characterized by dwindling fortunes in cinema theatres, leading to closure of famed theatres like Odeon cinema, Nairobi cinema, Fox drive-in cinemas, and Globe cinema, among others, in Nairobi and other major towns in Kenya. As the cinemas auditoriums were succumbing to the culture of indifference to theatre-going in the 1990s, estate and village video shows proliferated in the densely populated low-income urban and peri-urban areas in Kenya. Typified by screenings of popular Hollywood and Hong Kong action films, the video shows filled their benches by featuring commentators, popularly known as video-show deejays, the most renown being ‘Deejay Afro’. The popularity of ‘Deejay Afro’ cannot be overstated and to date his performances still endear a large section of the Kenyan audience in rural and peri-urban areas. So, what exactly about this modern film commentator endears him to his audience and what are the distinctive qualities of his art? These are the questions that this paper seeks to address, drawing parallels with the Japanese ‘Benshi’ as described by Don Kirihara and Donald Richie inter alia, and guided by the aesthetic theories of Theodor Adorno, and the Frankfurt school perspectives of spectatorship. The analysis is based on a ‘Deejay Afro’ commentaryItem Structure in Cinema: A Synthesis of Pleasure and Edification(2013) Mugubi, J.