Jim Chuchu & Wanuri Kahiu

This October in Nairobi, AFMAC welcomes two of Kenya’s most influential cultural voices to lead its next workshop: multidisciplinary artist Jim Chuchu and filmmaker and writer Wanuri Kahiu.

Together, Chuchu and Kahiu bring their visionary practices and commitment to African storytelling to AFMAC’s October workshop in Nairobi, creating a space for artists and filmmakers to explore 'Feelings as Creative Force—emotion as essential material and methodology in film and media arts'.

Jim Chuchu is a multidisciplinary Kenyan artist whose work spans film, music, photography, and visual arts. He rose to prominence as a founding member of the alternative music group Just a Band before co-founding the Nest Collective, a Nairobi-based multidisciplinary art collective exploring contemporary African and LGBTQ+ identities.

His critically-acclaimed directorial work includes the anthology film Stories of Our Lives, which won the Jury Prize at the 2015 Berlinale Teddy Awards and has screened in over 90 countries, and experimental shorts like VR short Let This Be a Warning, speculative doc Tapi! and We Need Prayers. His visual works have exhibited at a variety of institutions including MoMA, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, and the Vitra Design Museum.

As co-creator of the International Inventories Programme (2018–2021), Chuchu helped catalogue over 32,000 Kenyan cultural objects held in global institutions, becoming a vocal advocate for cultural repatriation and delivering a TED talk titled Why are stolen African artifacts still in Western museums? in 2021. A co-founding partner of HEVA, which has invested over $3 million in East African creative businesses, Chuchu recently composed for the Netflix documentary Hack Your Health and is currently co-producing Fight for Food, a documentary exploring Kenyan food systems. His practice continues to interrogate cultural identity, futures, heritage, and the lingering effects of colonialism through innovative storytelling across multiple mediums.

Wanuri Kahiu is an award-winning filmmaker, speaker, and science fiction writer. Her film RAFIKI was the first Kenyan film to screen at Cannes, earning global recognition. Named one of TIME’s 100 Next in 2019, she is a cultural leader for the World Economic Forum and an advocate for freedom of expression. Through AFROBUBBLEGUM, Kahiu champions fun, fierce and frivolous African art. She directed WASHINGTON BLACK for Hulu/20th Century Fox, Netflix’s LOOK BOTH WAYS, and is set to direct Disney’s ONCE ON THIS ISLAND.