Monthly Archives: September 2011

The Istituto Italiano di Cultura is organizing two evenings about RAI (Italian public Radio & Television) presented by Dr. Enzo Nucci, Director of the RAI Sub-Saharan office in Nairobi. Featuring the screening of brief documentaries in Italian (English presentation) on:

(1) The positive uses of waste from dumping grounds (29.9.11)
(2) The Kenyan way of democratizing information (29.9.11)
(3) The inhabitants of Daadab (6.10.11)

At the Italian Institute of Culture – Michelangelo Hall – Woodvale Close n. 1 – Westlands, Tel.: (020) 4451266 / 7 – www.iicnairobi.esteri.it
on 29th September and 6th October 2011 at 7pm.
ENTRANCE FREE

29.9.2011 at 7pm.

A documentary on the positive uses of waste from dumping grounds (2010, 16min)
Directed and narrated by: Enzo Nucci, in collaboration with Alessandra Argenti of the Cultural Video Foundation
Nairobi is the largest city of Eastern Africa with its 4½ million inhabitants. A few Kilometres from the city centre stands the dumping ground of Dandora, one of the largest in the world. Indeed, it covers an area of 30 km² and the surroundings are inhabited by more than 900,000 people. It was already declared full in 2001 but since then 2 tonnes of garbage continue arriving every day. Chemical, hospital, industrial, agricultural and domestic waste are unloaded and abandoned without any treatment. Whatever is not recovered is burnt due to lack of space. The toxic fumes contaminate the air 24 hours a day.
The residents say that when it rains, black spots of dirt form on their clothes, dramatically elementary proof of the high levels of atmospheric pollution.
The UNEP (United Nations Environmental Programme) published a worrying scientific report in 2007. In the documentary the possible solutions are also shown. Because garbage is wealth, as some young rappers sing in the clip, and with best practice it is possible to transform it into a source of livelihood.

Followed by:

A documentary on the Kenyan way of democratising information (2011, 16min)
Directed and narrated by Enzo Nucci in collaboration with Vincenzo Cavallo of the “Cultural Video Foundation”

Kenya, 27th December 2007. Few hours have passed since the closing of the ballot boxes for the presidential election when political activists, bloggers and computer programmers joined forces and in 3 days developed Ushahidi, a platform for participatory journalism using free and open source software (i.e. free from commercial copyrights). The three promoters of this venture were Ory Okolloh, Erik Hersman and David Kobia.
Thus a participatory independent media was born, unprecedented in the history of the internet, not only in Africa but also in the rest of the world.
Ushahidi allowed Kenyans to inform and enquire in real time on the atrocities that were consuming the country, by-passing the institutional media, giving news in advance but also providing a precious logistic service to all those who, having to move within the country shaken by the clashes, needed to avoid dangerous check-points and hotbeds of violence. This technological innovation soon became a global case for mapping information in a participatory and shared way.
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6.10.2011 at 7pm.

A documentary on the inhabitants of the Dadaab refugee camp (2009, 16min)
Directed and narrated by: Enzo Nucci, in collaboration with Vincenzo Cavallo of the “Cultural Video Foundation”

Dadaab is the third largest human residential settlement in Kenya after Nairobi and Mombasa. it is also the second Somali built-up area after Mogadishu. The inhabitants live in an area as large as the city of Florence.  This reportage (produced two years ago) highlights the drama of a situation that has exploded in all its gravity in the last months when the famine and drought emergency set in, pushing a thousand Somalis a day to look for help, however small, in the Dadaab camp.