In Nairobi's River Road, they can shoot a movie in a day, edit it in the next one and release it into the market by sunset, making lots of money in spite of the sloppy product.

NJERI KIHANG'AH has been talking to filmmakers out to change the way Riverwood

Soon there will be no more chalk on the faces of scruffily-clad River Road actors on your TV set. Notorious for its terrible lighting, poor audios, sloppy storylines and overzealous acting, Riverwood could change for the better, Art directors, scripts better lighting and all.

Hopefully, this time round, there will be no more solo productions -'peke yangu production' in River Road slang. In this unique production, the film's director is the producer and the star. After all, he's the only one who knows what he wants.

Set to spruce up Riverwood is a group of international movie producers Charles Liburd, Leon Coetzer and Jessica Noon of Earthbox EastArica in collaboration with the Kenya Film Commission (KFC).

Their Riverwood20 project is no road- side affair but an assortment of 20 ethnically diverse productions of choice genres. And it is all about producing talent, skill and creativity, particularly bringing out the business aspects of film production. The journey to Riverwood20 started when, Liburd, a Dutch producer and script writer was spotted holidaying in the country by the directors of Kwani? Trust - the publishers of the Kwani? literary journal, who invited him to give a pep talk to its members.

Much to their delight, Liburd showed up and shared his knowledge on matters film with them. Amazed by the knowledge of the Hollander, John Maina one of the River Road producers, hooked up with Liburd and introduced him to the informal: film industry that was, and is, Riverwood.

"I saw talent and enthusiasm but particularly, no skill;' says Liburd of the few River Road productions he has watched.
But lack of skill never stopped Riverwood from doing relatively well, even with the pirating of locally-produced movies being more of the rule than the exception. Riverwood is about the only place where selling 10,000 copies of shoddy VCDs for only Sh150 apiece would make you a millionaire.

Here, they dispense with aesthetics and generally don't think much of the relation between form and content. And they wouldn't waste time striving to have what Liburd calls a Kenyan voice - the kind one gets after reading the works of Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Francis Imbuga and Meja Mwangi's Going Down River Road novel, for instance.

But Riverwood has its own ideas about movies. Mburu Kimani, an actor and director, who has been in the River Road movie business since the days of the soap Tausi doesn't think highly of westernized story lines in the mainstream Kenyan productions.

"They are demeaning our culture:' he says. This, according to the director of films such as Mung'eng'ano (The Race) holds back the potential of the Riverwood productiom .It is against this background that KFC engaged Liburd, in his own instigation, engaged him to do a set of 20 films with a Riverwood crew. The films project would later be known as the Riverwood 20.

Liburd would assemble a team of producers and head back to Kenya. But there was a problem. The first film was in Kikuyu yet the script was in English. Fortunately, Liburd had met Maina who helped translate the first English piece into Kikuyu. Ken! is the first of the Riverwood 20 movies to be made and was shot m Nairobi, mainly at the La Mada Hotel on Thika Road.

Ken! is the story of a man living a lie. The hotel waiter claims to be a bank manager while in the company of his village folk yet his job hangs in the balance as his ego lands him into debts he can't pay. His social life revolves around a fantasy he harbours about Ng'endo, a radio DJ . As fate would have it, they meet when he rams into her car. Not the best first impression, as you would imagine.

Riverwood is famed

The rest of the story is a case of the young man trying to have his cake and eat it. Ken juggles through his two personas to find his way to love with the help of his best friend and wanna-be boxer Emmanuel played by Mburu Kimani.

The 74-minute romantic comedy may well be a general exhibition show as the content is devoid of steamy scenes. Quite a contrast since River Wood is famed for its racy movies that sell faster they can be pirated m this one stop-shop of a street. Think music, movies, electronics....

After the Ken! experience, Mburu is now charged up. As we walk down the streets, he tells me of a business idea that could turn me into a millionaire before Christmas.

"Give me 300,000 bob? and I'll show you how it's done; you can even come on-location and see for yourself and even
work with us?'