Film on Maathai hits home

Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai might be a global icon but at one time she was a poor village girl, a traumatised divorcee and a broke parent.

A new 80-minute film captures her dramatic life.

Taking Root, The Vision of Wangari Maathai, a new film about the Kenyan Nobel laureate has won more than 10 international awards since the premiere of the story of “a single woman who changed the world through planting trees.”

Famous daughter

American Alan Dater together with his wife Lisa Marton of Marlboro Productions produced the film of one of Kenya’s famous daughters labelled a “mad woman” by the ‘90s Parliament and a “an undisciplined woman” by Moi.

During an interview with Lifestyle, Lisa said that the movie was doing very well internationally. “People love it everywhere we screen it.

They seem to be inspired by Wangari Maathai. Already the movie has been screened in 22 countries and translated into Spanish, Polish, French and Hebrew,” she said during the Kenyan premiere.

Repressive regime

The film captures the human rights activist and environmentalist whose fearless stand against a repressive Moi regime, grabbing of Karura Forest, conservation of Uhuru Park and tree planting campaign have helped shape Kenya.

The directors structured the film around some climactic moment on a woman chiefly famous for being the first environmentalist, first African woman and first woman to get a PhD and first to win a Nobel award in East Africa.

It gives an equal space to every incident in Prof Maathai’s eventful life. An intelligent schoolgirl who won a Kennedy scholarship award to study in the US, Maathai’s divorce after four years in marriage, her financial woes to the proud moment she received her Nobel Prize in Oslo, Norway.

The film depicts a country ravaged by widespread deforestation that forces Prof Maathai (pictured) to start planting trees.

From the film, it’s as if she focused on planting trees as an escape from her dramatic and traumatising divorce that left her poor.

The film illustrates the mounting tension and frustration as the government moved to bar the women from planting trees.

Life on film
The idea to document Maathai’s life on film started in 2002 when the Hartley Film Foundation approached the Marlboro filmmakers to do a

15-minute film about her but they discovered that she was much more.