Queen of Katwe _mz_smart_, 7 октября 2016 г., 4:08
Tendo Nagenda finally had a plan. It was winter 2013; the Disney exec had spent months quietly developing a movie about a young girl in Uganda who became an international chess star, and now he knew who he wanted to direct it. Mira Nair didn’t really know Nagenda, but he happened to be visiting family in her backyard in the Ugandan city of Kampala, so he called her out of the blue. She didn’t mind; she invited him over for tea.
“I called her from the street somewhere; she said ‘Oh, I’m at home, why don’t you come up?’” Nagenda remembers. “And I was like, ‘Oh, I’m with my family, do you want to meet tomorrow?’ She’s like, ‘No, just bring ‘em!’”
That day, in the bamboo grove of her garden, the two made a pact: They were going to make a movie about Phiona Mutesi, a chess champion from the Kampala slum of Katwe. And they were going to get Disney—the home of Star Wars and Marvel and animated movies about lost fish—to make it. They just, like their protagonist’s signature move, had to be smart and aggressive.
The movie they made is Queen of Katwe, out today. It is a very Disney movie in that it centers around a family and has a happy ending. But it is a very un-Disney story in that it unblinkingly examines the poverty, violence, and racism its protagonists face every day. It is, in the words of its director, “a radical film for Disney in many ways. … It has beauty and barbarity side-by-side.”
Looking Outside the Magic Kingdom
That’s the way Nagenda wanted it. His father is from Uganda and the young executive, who joined Disney in 2010 after a stint with Brad Pitt’s Plan B, wanted to bring a movie to his studio that would push the boundaries of what people inside and outside of the company considered a Mouse House movie. Mutesi’s against-all-odds story, Nagenda felt, had the necessary “magic,” but it was also the kind of tale that would take audiences somewhere they might not otherwise get the chance to go. “That’s our job to do at Disney and I want[ed] to it with this one,” he says, “as improbable as it was.”
Queen of Katwe was shot over a couple of months in Uganda and South Africa. Nair, Nyong’o, Oyelowo, and newcomer Madina Nalwanga, who plays Phiona, all spent time with their offscreen counterparts to learn how to best represent their lives onscreen. It was tight to schedule the shoot to work among its stars’ other big projects—but it worked.
The result is a film that tells a very shiny story not too dissimilar from any sports drama or, say, Akeelah and the Bee—except that it happens in one of the poorest countries in the world and involves a young girl (Phiona was 11 years old when she won her first chess championship in Uganda) whose family is often left homeless and who, in one of the movie’s more gut-punching scenes, asks her coach, “Very soon, men will start coming after me—where’s my safe square?” It was, to hear its director tell it, not sanitized and also very real.
“Disney didn’t shy away from the reality I was bringing to them,” Nair says. “But there was also a vibrancy to it. It’s not the suffering Africa that people associate with these stories. It’s not about hanging your head and wanting to be saved by somebody who comes from the outside.”
Source: www.wired.com/2016/09/queen-of-katwe/
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“I called her from the street somewhere; she said ‘Oh, I’m at home, why don’t you come up?’” Nagenda remembers. “And I was like, ‘Oh, I’m with my family, do you want to meet tomorrow?’ She’s like, ‘No, just bring ‘em!’” That day, in the bamboo grove of her garden, the two made a pact: They were going to make a movie about Phiona Mutesi, a chess champion from the Kampala slum of Katwe. And they were going to get Disney—the home of Star Wars and Marvel and animated movies about lost fish—to make it. They just, like their protagonist’s signature move, had to be smart and aggressive. The movie they made is Queen of Katwe, out today. It is a very Disney movie in that it centers around a family and has a happy ending. But it is a very un-Disney story in that it unblinkingly examines the poverty, violence, and racism its protagonists face every day. It is, in the words of its director, “a radical film for Disney in many ways. … It has beauty and barbarity side-by-side.” Looking Outside the Magic Kingdom
That’s the way Nagenda wanted it. His father is from Uganda and the young executive, who joined Disney in 2010 after a stint with Brad Pitt’s Plan B, wanted to bring a movie to his studio that would push the boundaries of what people inside and outside of the company considered a Mouse House movie. Mutesi’s against-all-odds story, Nagenda felt, had the necessary “magic,” but it was also the kind of tale that would take audiences somewhere they might not otherwise get the chance to go. “That’s our job to do at Disney and I want[ed] to it with this one,” he says, “as improbable as it was.” Queen of Katwe was shot over a couple of months in Uganda and South Africa. Nair, Nyong’o, Oyelowo, and newcomer Madina Nalwanga, who plays Phiona, all spent time with their offscreen counterparts to learn how to best represent their lives onscreen. It was tight to schedule the shoot to work among its stars’ other big projects—but it worked. The result is a film that tells a very shiny story not too dissimilar from any sports drama or, say, Akeelah and the Bee—except that it happens in one of the poorest countries in the world and involves a young girl (Phiona was 11 years old when she won her first chess championship in Uganda) whose family is often left homeless and who, in one of the movie’s more gut-punching scenes, asks her coach, “Very soon, men will start coming after me—where’s my safe square?” It was, to hear its director tell it, not sanitized and also very real.
“Disney didn’t shy away from the reality I was bringing to them,” Nair says. “But there was also a vibrancy to it. It’s not the suffering Africa that people associate with these stories. It’s not about hanging your head and wanting to be saved by somebody who comes from the outside.” Source: www.wired.com/2016/09/queen-of-katwe/
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