Chasing Colour

—now in post-production—

Will God pay for your groceries? Will God pay for your nails? Your hair? a 70-something asks his 20-something girlfriend. No. No? Then I’m your God now.

Welcome to Hell. Karibuni! Mtwapa, Kenya. A place for European social outcasts to enjoy themselves on a shoestring. A place where dreams collide and desperation latches onto every single breath. Where every act is transactional, even the air is lacking. Black bodies are looking for a way out and white bodies for a way in. Passports for pussy. Asante sana!

Chasing Colour unwillingly gravitates towards Per, a caricature of himself, a Danish ladies’ man in his mid-70s, a self-avoidant hedonist and self-proclaimed good-doer, most definitely not in Mtwapa for the girls. The dancing Dane with the walking sticks and the dogs and he’s not there for the girls.

Self-deception is the necessary principle that allows Mtwapa to exist. No mirrors in Mtwapa! One unfortunate glimpse and you would have to do the unthinkable, you would have to live with yourself. And why on earth would you ever want to do that?

Per is the 70-something man and Bella is the 20-something girl he promised to marry. Their muddy road-love story serves as the framework through which we get to know all the corners of Mtwapa.

When the white man first set foot in the heart of Africa, he was observed walking back and forth, back and forth, carrying out incomprehensibly strange tasks, sweating and panting. The white man appeared kizunguzungu, Swahili for dizzy, and this became his name, mzungu. Centuries later the white man is still dizzy. The mzungu slowly waddles back and forth, back and forth, pole pole, seemingly fatigued by the African sun, only accompanied by his lonely dreams of eternal youth.