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Laikipia
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TYPE: Documentary Feature
GENRE: Documentary
STATUS: Post-Production
LOGLINE
Peaceful African herders and well-meaning white conservationists are now embroiled in a bloody conflict for Laikipia, a Kenyan wildlife haven-- as global warming changes everything.
SYNOPSIS
Peaceful African herders and well-meaning white conservationists are now embroiled in a bloody conflict for Laikipia, a Kenyan wildlife haven. In a situation with no easy answers, climate change, conflicting approaches to land use, and a contentious colonial history all threaten to undermine both conservation and a traditional way of life.
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
“Laikipia” will be filmed mostly in the tradition of direct cinema. While there are on-camera interviews that provide key narrative context, the majority of the film will follow characters through their daily lives with minimal intervention by the filmmakers. We’ve additionally provided GoPros to characters on each side to capture the conflicts that we cannot be present to film. We will utilize the rich resource of private and government-owned archival material to build historical context, and to provide exposition from both colonial history and that of the Samburu, Maasai and other tribes. Local and international news archives will serve to chronicle the political turning points. Together archival material will help to build the subplots that bring nuance to the historical and present day realities. A central element of the film will be the shifting of perspectives, achieved through editorial juxtaposition. This will serve to illustrate the stark contrast in perspective between the characters. The access that has been established and sustained on both sides is towards the intention of journalistic integrity. Editorially, it will enable intercutting between the starkly contrasting notions of reality, good and evil. Whose truth do historical accounts and current international news reporting represent, and who is making the decisions that govern the future?
KEY CREW
Daphne Matziaraki - Director
Daphne Matziaraki - Director, Director of Photography
Daphne Matziaraki is a Greek documentary film director based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She directed, produced, shot and edited the New York Times Op Doc ‘4.1 Miles,’ for which she received an Academy Award nomination, as well as an Emmy nomination and a Peabody Award.
Toni Kamau - Producer
Toni Kamau - Producer
Toni Kamau is a factual content producer based in Kenya, with over ten years experience producing content for Al Jazeera, CCTV Africa, BBC World, MTV Europe and regional African broadcasters. Her career has focused on telling the stories of outsiders, rebels and change makers on the African continent. Toni currently serves as a producer and co-producer on three feature documentaries filmed in Kenya, and has contributed to raising funding for them from Sundance, Doc Society, Hot Docs Blue Ice Fund, IDFA Bertha Fund, Just Films, DocuBox East Africa, Steps International, Arcus Foundation, Heinrich Boll Foundation and Oak Foundation and POV.
Maya Craig - Producer, second camera, sound recordist
Maya Craig is a documentary filmmaker and freelance director of photography based in San Francisco. After working in environmental policy for a number of years, Maya transitioned into film production in 2010 with the goal of bringing awareness to environmental issues through nonfiction storytelling. She's
worked on feature documentaries with Jigsaw Productions and Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program, and along the way has produced broadcast content for global creative agencies Mekanism and Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners. Her documentary “Water Town” is currently screening at festivals worldwide, and will be broadcast by PBS in Spring 2019. She holds Master’s in Documentary Film from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Roger Ross Williams - Executive Producer
Roger Ross Williams is an award-winning director, producer and writer and the first African American director to win an Academy Award Since 2016, Williams has been on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, serving as chair of the Documentary Branch and the documentary Diversity Committee. Williams serves on the Alumni Advisory Board of the Sundance Institute, the Advisory Board of Full Frame Festival, and the boards of the Tribeca Film Institute, Docubox Kenya, None On Record and the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa. He resides in New York and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Geoff Martz - Executive Producer
Geoff Martz is a four-time Emmy winning producer. He was one of Diane Sawyer’s lead producers for 8 years at ABC News, working on long-form projects like the Jaycee Dugard 2-hour special (17 million viewers) and the Gabby Giffords special (which won the Murrow Award), but he also did investigative hidden camera hours for 20/20 (including one that took down a $600 million dollar company) and highly-rated innovative crime hours.
He was a show-runner at What Would You Do for two years before being promoted to senior producer at Nightline where he won two more Murrows and a Peabody. In the last four years he’s been nominated for 16 Emmys.
Geoff joined forces with Roger in 2017 to form One Story Up where he is now Head of Development, and Vice President.
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