For The Love Of Film

- Jamila Boyani Onchangu

Fifty-year-old Mwaniki Mageria is a man who is not afraid to stand out. He always knew that he wanted to be an entertainer from an early age. He has made it his sole goal to promote Kenya’s film industry in his small way through distribution. GROWING UP, YOU DIDN’T LIVE IN ONE PLACE FOR LONG.   My dad was a police officer so we moved a lot. I was born in Nairobi at Aga Khan Hospital – everybody was getting born there at that time. We briefly moved to Kisii then back in Nairobi. When I was four, my mother decided to go back to university so I went to stay with my grandmother in Karatina, which I enjoyed thoroughly but for the raw eggs she used to give us once a week. HOW DID YOU GET INTO THE FILM INDUSTRY? From an early age, I wanted to be like Michael Jackson. I also had a crush on his sister, Janet Jackson. They were all we used to watch on TV and we couldn’t help but admire them. I liked singing a lot and I would make my family laugh. Performing has always been in me. I like to believe that entertainment chose me because it was inevitable that I would end up in a career that didn’t have ties to entertainment. By that time my dad became a businessman I could tell that he wanted to groom me and introduce me to the corporate world. My biggest challenge was to marry corporate with entertainment. WHAT DID YOU DO BEFORE GETTING IN THE INDUSTRY?