Alex Kanyi Maina IS film writer, director, and producer. In 2006, after I purchased my first Handycam, I began making videos. In the beginning, I would record home videos for friends and family members on special occasions like birthdays and graduations. It was until I discovered that I could make a respectable living out of it after getting a few corporate commissions from Kituo cha Sheria, Coalition of Woman Against Violence, Center for Multiparty Democracy among other NGOs, that I started thinking about documentary films.

 I received funding from the Kenya Community Development Fund in 2007 to produce a docu-drama titled ShengTown, which emphasizes the cohesiveness of urban residents who are united by the street slang called "Sheng." I have worked in different capacities within the Kenyan film industry including script supervisor.

 I attended Maisha Film Lab by Mira Nair in 2017, and I learned a lot about screenplay writing and the many formats of narrative, from which I was able to communicate with mentors in the film industry and other friends who also offered their experiences. Being the beneficiary of this kind of engagement, I think that my career path as a filmmaker has improved.

 In 2018 saw the New York premiere of a short film I co-directed and scripted called Some Domme. And later that year I attended the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema’s Microprogram in Screenwriting and Film Producing, Concordia University, Canada. I am currently attending a year-long Masterclass from Some Fine Day Pix in Nairobi, Kenya. 

Director’s Statement

 My wish for Critical Mass NBO came about as a result of being struck from behind by a public transportation van. I was admitted to the hospital due to a brain injury. For a few months, I experienced memory loss, and the only thing I could recall was that I could ride a bike. After my memories came back, I made the decision to make this movie in order to raise awareness of the need for infrastructure change that benefits cyclists. I now collaborate with filmmakers from five continents, and our goal is to create an omnibus movie that highlights the diverse critical masses that each city has to offer.

Mark Sylver Junsunn LO,

Guadeloupean multidisciplinary visual and audiovisual artistic designer.

Director Infographic designer / Illustrator- Graphic designer / Visual artist.

Graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and the Gobelins School of Image in Paris. 

In his cinematic and activist approach...He works to bring about an identity Cinema, showcasing the aesthetics of the political-poetic, of marvelous realism and the sublime, with the paradoxical alliance of Neo-realism and the fantastic genre.

By taking inspiration from the tribality of ancestral animist cultures,

It is thus nourished by the singularity of the folklore of Afro-Caribbean and African descent.

Note d'intention du réalisateur :

At the start of the project, in 2018, it was about making an anticipation film, borrowing from the codes of fantasy.

A film which imagined, in the near future, a country in agony, undermined by an epidemic which decimates the population.

An epidemic then conceived as a dystopian metaphor for the economic, social, cultural and political slump which characterizes today's Martinique, in a state of anomie, with an increasingly strong rise in violence.

As a mode of expression, and of non-resolution, of the tensions and inequalities which fracture living together...

A fiction in which very few would undoubtedly have agreed to recognize the Martinique of the future.

It was then to count without this formidable capacity of reality to surpass and confirm fiction...Covid... Poisoning, increasingly difficult to deny, of the country by chlordecone... Explosion of cases of Cancer, particularly in the agricultural world... Increasingly feverish protest by activists against the denial of justice 'a state apparatus which is slow, almost fifteen years after the first complaints, to seek out and prosecute those responsible... Dismantling and destruction of statues imposing a national narrative indifferent to the contribution of the vanquished to their own liberation... Insubordination of an entire people refusing, as a single bloc, to comply with the health injunctions of a State judged to be above ground, colonial and liberticidal..

It is this reality that gradually invited itself into the writing process... and profoundly modified its intention and content.

By forcing us, day by day, to adjust the scenario according to the propositions of reality itself, to ultimately design a fiction as close as possible to the History that is being written before our eyes...

Dramaturgy of immediate History and aesthetics of the documentary then come together to put themselves at the service of a film responsible for its time...A film which asserts itself as a punchy film... without renouncing the poetry of the initial project (metaphors of the marine cemetery borrowed from Paul Valéry, voice-over making the words of the poet Birago Diop meditate on the eternity of the spirit subsisting on the corruption of bodies, desert seascapes devastated by sun,

A lyrical film therefore at the same time as a testimonial film...

A film which shows the counter-violence of a country in insurrection and the risk of collapse which threatens the collective if the denial of justice continues to want to assert its violence...

A political film, that is to say a film which accepts to think,

A film which, with the miraculous weapons of cinema, takes its part in the fight...

A film so you don't go crazy for not knowing how to say...Show...Tell.

A bloody film...A band-aid film...A conscious film...

A necessary film...

Katherine Adams

Dir Bio: Actress, producer and writer, Katherine Adams graduated from several schools in theater and law. Always walking on the edge of creativity and social impact, she has worked for the United Nations, the Olympic Committee, Cirque du Soleil, and ATFC ciné, among others. She has co-founded Associated Actors, Global Goodness, and White Wash Productions. African-Canadian and Quebecker, she is part of a large family from Halifax, the first and most significant black community in Canada. Katherine Adams signs her very first film with Mixed Memories. Although as an actress, she has been involved in movies and television for many years and has worked in different productions as a writer and producer, directing Mixed Memories allows her to express her talent in a totally different way. A challenging adventure full of promises.

Dir. Statement

I am mixed. My father is black but I’m white appearing. Being mixed is definitely an asset but when your skin doesn’t show it, it can add a layer of complexity. I would often find myself between a rock and a hard place. I’ve experienced the violence and discrimination coming from racism in a different way than if my skin had been darker because it was directed at the most important man in my life, my father. I have often said ‘’I am you as well as the other one’’.

Jeffrey Oba

Dir Bio: Jeffrey Oba is a skilled photographer and filmmaker, excels in visual narratives for both commercial and artistic projects.

He's worked with brands like Lusso Skin and CaveMen, runs the 5K Art Store for affordable art, and is currently

documenting "Life in Lagos."