Thika, the home of Tarzan
TARZAN
I, Tarzan. You Jane. This, Thika . Surely, the monkey Chita and company would be ironed to see what the place has become that served as the setting for Tarzan the vigilante , among other tapes of the monkey man. If on that occasion -recalls the journalist Basil Deakin-, a drought was hitting central Kenya and the waters of the Fourteen Waterfalls were barely enough for Gordon Scott to jump from the vine into the water, today the Sunday people have finished with the landscape . The falls are still there, but the enclosure is now taken over by gigantic groups who go there to spend the day and leave the place full of rubbish. Tarzan would have rebuked them with one of his screams.
The Kibera slum in Nairobi
THE LOYAL GARDENER
The repetitive and choral “How are you?” that the Kenyan children of the shanty town of Kibera -in Nairobi- dedicate to Tessa (Rachel Weisz) in The loyal gardener (2005) are the same ones with which the kids, habitually and tirelessly, greet the white visitor who enters the alleys of the favela. The last scenes of the film were shot in the spectacular Lake Turkana, in the north of the country, where psychedelic colors mix in the waters with the ocher of the desert . The house in which Tessa lives together with her husband Justin (Ralph Fiennes) is a colonial building located on Farmhouse Road, a house with a past marked by Hollywood.
MOGAMBO
Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly also set foot in the house on Farmhouse Road in Nairobi. This stellar mid-20th-century film crew gathered at the Nairobite mansion during the filming of Mogambo (1953). The troop of this overacted love triangle (in an imaginary and clichéd African country) traveled around Mount Kenya and Hell's Gate National Park. Several tribes from Kenya, Tanzania and what is now Cameroon participated in the film , a classic of animal abuse. Director John Ford places the gorillas in a non-existent jungle on the slopes of Mount Kenya. In reality, the closest gorillas are in southern Uganda.
The Maasai, improvised actors
A TRIBE ON THE PITCH
When in A tribe on the field (1994), trainer Jimmy Dolan (Kevin Bacon) travels “to Africa” to try to sign the diamond in the rough Saleh, it is to Kenya that he flies. The country, however, is far from being a basketball power, and its indisputable strength is long-distance and middle-distance running. However, the maasai , like the one drawn for Saleh's tribe by director Paul M. Glaser in the film, they are famous for their great jumps . Powerful enough to smash the rim in the last second of the game.
THE WHITE MASAI
in the foreseeable the white maasai (2005), a white girl falls in love with a muscular Maasai on the ferry in Likoni (Mombasa). At the end of her vacation with her boyfriend on the Kenyan coast, Carola (Nina Hoss) decides not to return to Europe, to leave her boy, and to stay on Kenyan soil to build a life with Lemalian (Jacky Ido). Nevertheless, things in the Maasai territory (southern and parts of central Kenya) are far from the life surrounded by the noble savage that the protagonist dreams of.
Mount Kenya, impressive
IN A PLACE IN AFRICA
When the rich Jewish family Redlich decides to flee Nazism and take refuge somewhere in Africa (2001) , the producers decide that it be at the foot of the imposing Mount Kenya. Little Regina (played by Lea Kurda, as a child, and Karoline Eckertz, as an adult) grows up mixed with the local population, from whom she quickly learns the language. The struggle of a refugee family to rebuild their lives in the vicinity of the second highest mountain on the continent (only behind nearby Kilimanjaro) won the Oscar for best foreign film from 2002.
THE LION KING
King Mufasa's domains make up a large portion of southern Kenya, and perhaps northern Tanzania as well. Subjects flock to see the birth of his cub passing Mount Kilimanjaro in their view from Amboseli National Park, while the hyenas and Scar probably conspire in the gorges of Hell's Gate, where a stampede leads to the flight of Simba (lion, in Swahili, the local language). The baboon Rafiki (friend, in Swahili, and one of the animals that does not exist in East Africa that appears in the film) will be happy to meet you somewhere perhaps in the Maasai Mara, will convince you to return to reclaim your throne, and thus become The Lion King (1994).
Lake Naivasha, nature reserve
MEMORIES OF AFRICA
Memories of Africa (1985) made an entire generation go crazy. The sugar-coated romance between Baroness Blixen (Meryl Streep) and adventurer Denys Finch-Hatton (Robert Redford) takes place at the foot of the Ngong Hills, among other places. **You can still visit the Karen Blixen House Museum (in Nairobi) today**, with more paraphernalia about the film than the one dedicated to the life of the real Karen. The flight that both share in the Finch-Hatton plane will take them over the Karuru Falls (in the Aberdares mountain range), the inactive volcano of Longonot, and the nearby Lake Naivasha, where they contemplate thousands of flamingos. Given their relative similarity, they may have been the caldera of the Menengai volcano and Lake Nakuru. Views from the top of Mount Kenya close the romantic scene. The tracks of the Lunatic Express, which connects Mombasa with Nairobi and can still be taken, also appear in the film.
BONUS TRACK
In I Dreamed of Africa (2000), Kuki Gallman (played by Kim Bassinger) does not dream of the more than fifty countries that make up the continent, but of Kenya, where the film is set. Several episodes of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones were also filmed on Kenyan soil. Other “African blockbusters” were shot directly on location described in the story: for example, the last king of scotland (2006), in Uganda, Gorillas in the Mist (1988), mainly in Rwanda, and Undefeated (2009), in various locations in South Africa. Blood Diamond (2006), however, is out of place: while the story should take place in several West African countries, it was shot in Mozambique, with some scenes in neighboring South Africa.
Kenya, a country of film
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