The spirit of Kanju: young Africans amplifying leadership through documentary film work

Abstract

This chapter explores the transformative impact of a film-creating process on a group of 19 first-time filmmakers, all of them university graduates and alumni of the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program. Following training, filmmakers embarked on a year-long mission to find out what it means and what it takes to be a leader on the African continent, and selected elders, artists, religious leaders, educators, community leaders, business leaders, politicians, and activists of their choosing to interview. The outcome is revealed in the feature-length, collaborative documentary film The Spirit of Kanju: Leaders Transforming Africa. This chapter uses film analysis to ask whether film-creating processes have the capacity to grow transformative leadership behind and beyond the lens. We describe an inclusive, participatory, and experimental process of 'imperfect' cinema creating, and reflect on these learnings as they relate to broader understandings of transformative and transformational leadership in African contexts.