By Rachael Diang’a

USIU-Africa’s film students have garnered eight nominations at the prestigious Kalasha Film and TV Awards’ 2021 edition. The University submitted four films out of the five that were produced in Summer in the final year project course, PRD4010 – Producing from Greenlight to Completion. Out of the four film submissions, two films, Knock – Directed by Kelvin Osoo and House of Secrets - Directed by Michelle Donde and Steph Sevani made it to the top five in six categories. The students worked in teams to produce industry-standard films, which were partly assessed internally and partly assessed by industry filmmakers who came on campus at the end of Summer 2021 to watch and give constructive feedback to the students’ work.

What’s more exciting is that the students’ films competed favourably with the film industry productions and seven out of the eight nominations are in industry category. For students’ category, USIU-Africa’s two films made it to the top five, making USIU-Africa a top film school in the country.

Kalasha is an annual international film and TV Awards ceremony, dubbed the Kenyan Oscars and showcases and awards crème de la crème of film and TV talents in Kenya and beyond.

Other than the student films, one of the students in that class, Danny Skilton, got a nomination for Best Director of Photography for the film he worked on alongside professional filmmakers in the industry.

These nominations portend a strong come-back for our film and Animation students who due to Covid-19 pandemic were not able to produce major films in 2020. We look forward to turning these nominations into film awards during the Kalasha Awards Night later in the year. To achieve this, we need your support; we implore you to vote for our students’ films once the voting link is provided by the Kenya Film Commission, who are the hosts of this event.

In the film industry the world over, nominations and awards are very important as they enrich a filmmaker’s industry experience and portfolio, placing them a cut above the rest and open doors for greater opportunities.

This year’s nominations standing at eight with seven coming from students’ films is a mark of great improvement from our 2019 Kalasha nominations, which then stood at 6. We also hope to bring home more awards than the one award our students brought home in 2019. This will increase the number of the awards our students have received since 2018 from the current 47.

Please vote here in support of the nominees: https://bit.ly/3nUHqdO