In Kenya’s Kaloleni Social Hall, Film Finds a Wider Audience

It’s 10 a.m. on a Saturday, and Nairobi’s Kaloleni Social Hall begins to fill up. Chairs are arranged neatly in rows, facing a small stage draped in bright blue and white fabric. Children from the neighborhood arrive one by one, slipping into seats with chatter and nervous energy. 

The lights dim. The projector hums. On screen, the story of Uli & Tata begins. It is a Kenyan animation about two siblings on a journey to search for Africa's nursery rhymes. For many of the children watching, it is a rare chance to see characters — even in animated form — who look and sound like them.

In Kaloleni, a neighborhood often left out of Nairobi’s creative cultural map, the NBO Film Festival is doing something both simple and significant: making sure that film reaches those who are rarely considered its audience.

“Kaloleni Social Hall has always been especially important to us, because it’s such an iconic Kenyan landmark,” festival co-founder and filmmaker Mbithi Masya tells OkayAfrica. “For us, that’s a very historical place that, when it comes to recapturing Kenya’s imagination…which I think cinema does…that place is a very big focal point.”

Since the festival’s second edition in 2018, Kaloleni Social Hall has been a regular screening venue. The showings are always free and thoughtfully curated, and the space also hosts many of the festival’s filmmaking masterclasses. The decision to bring programming here was both personal and political.

In a city where commercial cinemas are clustered in malls and high-income neighborhoods, entire communities have been excluded from cinema culture. Kaloleni Social Hall is located in Nairobi’s Eastlands, which — even though there’s a strong appetite for film in the area — has no cinemas. With the collapse of Kenya’s public cinema infrastructure in the 1990s, a once-vibrant communal tradition of moviegoing was lost. For most people, watching films has become a solitary act, shaped by geography, class, and access.

“The whole point of this festival was never to create another showbiz affair. It was the audience first,” Masya adds. “Today, most people are watching films wherever they are, not in movie theaters. So we knew it was important for [the festival] to go to people; to bring films directly into communities and spaces like Kaloleni Social Hall.”

A Historic Hall Reclaimed

Kaloleni Social Hall, located in the historic Kaloleni estate, was constructed in the 1940s as part of a British colonial plan to provide housing and amenities for African soldiers returning from World War II. The estate and its social hall were intended as a reward for service, but quickly became something larger.

In the years that followed, the hall hosted weddings, football matches, and political meetings. It was there that a famous photo of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s founding president, was taken in 1963, alongside Tom Mboya, a revolutionary independence-era politician, their arms raised in celebration after their political party won the national elections. The estate was segregated during the colonial era; it was part of a government plan to house the black population, while other Nairobi neighborhoods were designated for Asians or whites. As a result, it was also a key gathering place for leaders involved in Africa’s independence movements who were passing through Kenya. Figures like Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, Uganda’s Milton Obote, and Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah also passed through the neighborhood. 

In 2014, the site was announced as a national monument.

But like much of Nairobi’s Eastlands, Kaloleni has faced years of neglect. Its colonial buildings remain, but water shortages, waste buildup, and aging infrastructure mark its decay. Despite this, the hall functions today as a space for gathering, learning, and now, cinema.

“The community and the people are happy because they embrace the place,” says Lillian Mwegai, who works at Kaloleni Social Hall. “If they have meetings and it’s full inside, they continue outside in the compound. When they’re idle, they come, pick up rubbish, and cut the grass. It means a lot to them.”

To Masya and the team, Kaloleni offers what commercial cinemas simply can’t: accessibility, community, and legacy. “These [types of] places used to be where politics, ideas, and culture met,” he explained. “We wanted to reactivate that energy through film.”

This year, twelve films will be screened at Kaloleni Social Hall, mostly over two weekends. Volunteers walk through the neighborhood with flyers, reminding residents what’s offered. A large banner announces the festival, while smaller posters listing the schedule are taped to the doors.

Reaching New Audiences

For filmmaker Nyasha Kadandara, screening her debut feature Matabeleland at Kaloleni allowed the film to reach beyond the usual audiences that attend cinemas. It brought her work into spaces filmmakers rarely access.

“I made [this film] for the masses,” the Nairobi-based Zimbabwean filmmaker tells OkayAfrica. “I made it for lots of people, and it's so nice when you take it to a broader audience that aren't necessarily other filmmakers.”

For Kadandara, the screenings at Kaloleni also work in reverse. They draw people into parts of Nairobi they don’t know or might otherwise ignore. “There are a lot of people who don’t even know where Kaloleni is,” she says. “You have to tell them [that] it’s one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, and one of the parts of Eastlands that’s closest to [the CBD].”

That unfamiliarity reveals something deeper: the limited and uneven distribution of film venues, often along class lines. “There’s a whole part of the city that’s not accessible to us as filmmakers, in terms of distributing our films,” she says. “It adds to the segregation. We need more spaces, in more parts of the city.”

Filmmaker Nick Wambugu, who is screening his first feature film, The People Shall, at this year’s festival, sees the NBO Film Festival as vital to bridging those gaps. In addition to the screening, he led a cinematography workshop at the social hall.

“It’s dope sharing it with other guys who might really want to learn from you,” he said. “It’s quite a privilege.”

Co-directed by Mark Maina, The People Shall captures Kenya’s 2024 youth-led protests against the Finance Bill, a movement that evolved into a broader referendum on the country’s governance. Though it hasn’t screened at Kaloleni yet, Wambugu is eager to bring it there this coming weekend.“I know Kaloleni might have some of the craziest energy in a positive way,” he said. “I’ve only shown it once so far. Showing it in Kenya, and specifically there, is important.”

For Wambugu, the value of such spaces like Kaloleni Social Hall lies not just in who watches, but in where they’re watching.

“It’s a different audience, but only because of where the venues are,” he explained, “Kaloleni isn’t a cinema; it’s a social hall. But imagine if there was a proper cinema here, and another one in Buru Buru, Umoja, or Kayole. You’d get the same kind of audience, just closer to where they live.”

He adds that public spaces like Kaloleni aren’t just stand-ins for commercial cinemas. They are cultural hubs that must be prioritized. “You can’t just build a social hall in Kaloleni when there’s none in Kayole,” he says. “These spaces should exist everywhere, but especially in neighborhoods that don’t have other options.”

A Spark Becomes a Vision

It’s a vision shared by Masya, the festival’s co-founder, whose own story began with a screen and a spark.

Masya’s earliest memory of film centers on the first time he truly saw himself on screen. As a child, he went with his father to a video library and watched The Kitchen Toto, a British film featuring a Black Kenyan boy in a leading role. He didn’t fully understand the story’s political context, but the image stuck with him: watching someone who looked like him.

“If there’s a kid there, maybe in 10 or 15 years, who says, ‘Yeah, I’m making movies because I went to a screening [at Kalolenia Social Hall] back then,’ that’s it!” he says. “If someone is inspired to do something impactful with their life because of something they saw…that’s success for me.” 

For more insights on the challenges and rewards of organizing Nairobi’s film festivals, read What it’s like to run a film festival in Nairobi.