Kenyan Film Maker, Judy Kibinge has put Kenya on a glory path after becoming the first Kenyan to join the Oscar Academy, reports Daily Nation.
She is among 774 people invited to join the club this year.
It is believed that the new class joining the academy has a substantial number of black people nominated.
This follows numerous complaints from black actors and activists who cited that blacks have always been sidelined and that the Oscars are ”too white”.
However, the Academy has increased the number of women invited into AMPAS by 359 percent.
The number of blacks invited for the same has also increased to 331 percent.
“We’re proud to invite our newest class to the Academy. The entire motion picture community is what we make of it.” said the Academy’s President of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Cheryl Boone Isaacs.
“It’s up to all of us to ensure that new faces and voices are seen and heard, and to take a shot on the next generation the way someone took a shot on each of us,” he said.
Kibinge was born in 1967 in Nairobi but moved to Washington D.C in 1969.
At a tender age of 7 years, she won a Children’s writing competition in America. They later returned to Kenya where she attended Kenya High School.
She then moved to the UK where she attended Art College in Birmingham before proceeding to Manchester Polytechnic and graduated in Design for Communication Media.
Kibinge is known for her great works in writing, producing, and directing a number of films such as Something Necessary (2013), Dangerous Affair (2002), and Project Daddy (2004).
She is the brainchild behind the establishment of Docubox, a documentary film fund for African filmmakers to help them produce and distribute their film.
She has won the African Movie Magic Awards in (2009) for Best Short Documentary category-Coming of Age.
Dangerous Affair has also won an award at the Zanzibar Film Festival.
Her works showcase real life problems on the African continent such as colonialism, war, and hunger.
Kibinge is also a founding member of Kwani Trust, which is an African magazine based in Kenya.
