If you are the type who keeps tabs on the local creative industry, you have an idea of who Ian Kimanje is. A filmmaker with credits such as Shomilu, Jescalioty, Be a Great Writer, and docuseries, The History of African Cinema, among other productions. He is also the director of the Opportunities Are Here reality show currently screening on NTV Uganda.
Currently, Kimanje is making waves on the global film, specifically documentary film circuit with his new documentary film, Carnival, They Can’t Steal Our Joy. According to the film’s website, in the 18th Century, enslaved Africans on an island in the Caribbean revolted to fight for their freedom by using their forbidden cultural rituals and folklores. That creative resistance movement is the current day Caribbean Carnival.
During the rebellion, there was a massacre of many ex-enslaved people, but they fought back with joy.
Ian Kimanje’s Carnival: They Can’t Steal Our Joy, is a burst of colour, sound and defiance. It is a personal story of Kimanje as an African-Canadian filmmaker, wondering why many Caribbeans and Africans in the diaspora find bundles joy in celebrating carnival year after year and it’s for all ages in the black community.
On his journey, Kimanje discovers the little-unknown history embedded in carnival, how the traditional rituals were kept alive even under the years of enslavement and instead of choosing deadly weapons to fight back, they used their bodies, dance, drums, and music to quest for their liberation. Filmed in five countries, the filmmaker shows us how the carnival has spread in more than 80 cities worldwide and reveals why it is culturally and economically relevant today as it was when it was created 200 years ago.
