Popped spoke with Anthony Silverston, executive producer of Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire, alongside directors Nthato Mokgata (Surf Sangoma), Pious Nyenyewa (Mukudzei) and Raymond Malinga (Herderboy) about the Disney+ anthology’s inspirations, themes, African identity and the impact they hope it will have on future generations.
What Is ‘Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire’?
Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire is an action-packed animated sci-fi anthology that presents ten futuristic visions from Africa inspired by the continent’s diverse histories and cultures. Executive produced by Oscar®-winning director Peter Ramsey, these ten short films made by a new generation of animation directors draw on uniquely African perspectives to imagine brave new worlds of advanced technology, aliens, spirits, and monsters. This is Africa as you’ve never seen it before.
Who Did Popped Speak To?
Anthony Silverston – Executive Producer
Anthony Silverston is partner and Creative Director at Triggerfish Animation Studios in South Africa where he oversees a slate of projects in development and production. These include Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire, Supa Team 4 for Netflix, and Kiya & the Kimoja Heroes with Disney, eOne, and Frogbox. In 2015, he oversaw the Triggerfish Story Lab, an initiative where 4 feature films and 4 TV series were developed after a continent-wide search that drew almost 1400 entries. He also directed and co-wrote the feature film Khumba, which premiered in competition at Annecy International Animation Festival in 2013. He also produced and wrote on Triggerfish’s other films Adventures and Zambezia and Seal Team (released globally in December 2021 on Netflix) and he was producer of the Blender short film, Troll Girl, and Belly Flop which screened at over 140 festivals and won 14 awards. His graphic novel, Pearl of the Sea, co-written with Raffaella Delle Donne and Willem Samuel was recently released to critical acclaim.
Raymond Malinga – Director (Herderboy)
Raymond Malinga is the CEO of the Creatures Company Ltd (aka Kiroho Animation), an animation studio based in Kampala. He graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Animation and Visual Effects in 2014 from Multimedia University Cyberjaya, Malaysia. He directed and produced the multi-award-winning animated film A Kalabanda Ate My Homework. Creatures is focused on developing original content in the form of short films, TV shows and feature films that showcase the African spirit in new and fantastic ways.
Nthato Mokgata – Director (Surf Sangoma)
Nthato Mokgata, also known as Spoek Mathambo, a Standard Bank Young Artist Award Winner 2020, is a South African writer, artist, filmmaker, producer, and singer-songwriter defined by his unique vision for African art, which infuses futurism with a strong sense of pride in where he comes from. Currently focused on animation and film projects, Mokgata continues to challenge himself as a multidisciplinary artist. Mokgata’s latest documentary film project, Mutant has received critical acclaim as well as leading to being ranked both #7 in the Top 10 directors and musical composers in Africa and the Middle East by the Loeries organisation.
Pious Nyenyewa – Director (Mukudzei)
Pious Nyenyewa is the Studio Captain and Lead Art/Technical director at ALULA Animation with strong expertise in visual development for Animation and has over 13 years of experience working in the advertising industry. His start in the animation industry was as a freelance 3D Generalist later worked as a creative consultant for design agencies and has since branched into Directing for Film and television. In 2016, he founded ALULA Animation and began by working on small projects doing service work in the commercial space, gaining a strong presence and winning awards for the creative work leading to a great film directing path with Disney+ and Triggerfish Animation. On a regular basis, he gives talks at workshops and tertiary institutes in Zimbabwe and works on personal projects.
Watch The Full Interview
Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire Explores Themes Of Self-Discovery. What From Your Personal Lives Did You Want To Bring Into The Films?
Pious Nyenyewa (Director of Mukudzei): Um, yeah, I guess I could start. So I grew up with a generation with people that was Lost. So we grew up with a lot of Western influence, and it was great. Right -a least that’s what I thought. So we tried as well as much as we could to be as American as possible. But then in the end, as you grow older, you realise that your identity is being lost. Then, that puts you down this rabbit hole trying to figure out, who are we exactly as a people. That you then figure out in that journey of self-discovery is very devastating, you know, from the great Zimbabwe and the destruction of it to being colonized and the campaigns that erased our history. So that pushes you to have something to say and say. In that moment, you realise how disconnected you are and how much you don’t know. So in this film, we briefly explore some of those topics.
But really the biggest topic that we explore is, the connection that we get – we call it “Ubuntu” here in Africa. The connection that we have as people, you know, defining who we are as Africans and just going beyond those colonial borders and stuff. So for my own personal life, this is what I bring and part of my sister is experience in the character to me.
Raymond Malinga (Director of Herderboy): The aspects that I bring – my story is about a character who’s trying to prove themselves, which is kind of redundant sentence there. But they go trying to prove themselves and trying to show that if they’re given a chance, they can they can just play with the big boys, you know? That is pretty much what we’ve been going through for a long time. I say “we” because I’ve come to learn that a lot of the directors do resonate with this message, which is Africa has been here, We’ve been doing stuff, you know, and this is a platform to show what we can do, and it’s just the starting point.
You know, it’s just a foundation, if you will, and there’s much more to come from that. I think the themes that are very strong in my that I want the audience to take away from this, which is also my reality, which is that if you just open your mind and give some people an opportunity, you know, you might be surprised at what solutions they come up with and what they’re capable of doing. So that’s it?
Were There Any Specific Cinematic Influences You Wanted To Bring Into Either Your Visual Style Or Storytelling Approaches?
Nthato Mokgata (Director of Surf Sangoma): Specifically, we were influenced by horror, with some feelings of body horror on one side, but from another side, a kind of genre of West African films that Ghanaians and Nigerians made a lot of like horror spiritual thrillers in the 80s and 90s. That was definitely a school and style that influenced how to infuse Africa into the horror. I think, yeah, for me that has always been a really big influence.
Raymond Malinga (Director of Herderboy): For my film. It’s I was looking at the so it’s the Spaghetti Western, the Americans have the Spaghetti Western, the Japanese have the Samurai Chanbara films, and I was looking for what would be the equivalent on the African continent. So I use the cattle herders, and so my influences were… I was trying to see what I could borrow from some of those genres and bring it into a new genre, if you will, here in the African continent.
Pious Nyenyewa (Director of Mukudzei): For me, it was Blade Runner 2049 meets Mad Max. So it’s like the grandeur of the world, right? You’re just like a tiny little creature that’s just navigating your way in this amazing big world that they dare to advance. Right? This is sci-fi that we’re talking about, but at the same time, it’s like high energy – it never has a dull moment and the moment that it just cools down, it makes you cry. So those two films for us were such a big influence in the art style, the palette, and just the road rage, just like for the beginning of the film, through to the end, I think we literally have like, like a scene in there where there’s, like literal road rage. So the two films that defined our film.
If You Could Give Three Words For Audiences To Describe The Series, What Would You Say To Hype It Up?
Anthony Silverston (Executive Producer): Fresh, Diverse and Entertaining – I guess. I think that covers it. I yeah, I think there’s a good push for it forward because as you know, two generations of those are forwards.
Is There Any Message Or Impact You Hope This Series Has, Especially On Younger Viewers, By Getting This Kind Of Storytelling Out There?
Raymond Malinga (Director of Herderboy): What I would hope is, we’re sitting here and our influences were mostly Western or Eastern or even European films that we grew up with, and I think I’m quite excited to see what the next generation of filmmakers will produce, given the fact that they grew up on Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire and what’s to come. Because if this is produced with the influences and trying to distance ourselves, not necessarily distance ourselves, but embracing the circumstances under which we were raised. I’m curious to see how the next generation of filmmakers will be inspired by a media environment, where they have these options.
Nthato Mokgata (Director of Surf Sangoma): I think it feels like we’re continuously smashing ceilings, you know? So we just want these next generations, even my nephew, he’s in animation college now, and for him to see this project immediately opens up what possibility that his uncle did this. It gives immediate pressure, whereas some things are new. I know growing up for myself, some things felt like very distant dreams, but the moment you can have people that you can relate to, you know achieving and pushing, those ceilings disappear and then it feels like an obvious next step as opposed to like the remote fantasy.
Anthony Silverston (Executive Producer): I think also just showing the world that the stuff from Africa can be of this quality and to help change perceptions of Africa. It’s a more external-facing goal, I guess. I think there’s a huge internal goal in terms of representation and all of that, but this project I think, is a powerful tool to kind of break down some of those perceptions.
Nthato Mokgata (Director of Surf Sangoma): What’s exciting about what Anthony is saying is that it can break down some of those perceptions through an entertaining medium. Not something that’s really heavy.
Raymond Malinga (Director of Herderboy): Kids from all walks of life, who will watch this and how they grow up might be changed, you know? Our perception of Japan is influenced a lot by anime, you know? Like, oh, they do these cool things. We’re big fans of that. Then, of course, America, you have Disney doing some crazy stuff there. Africa. Yeah, we can do some cool stuff too, you know? So I think that that’s important.
Nthato Mokgata (Director of Surf Sangoma): What could also be cool maybe is not even for people to make films, but to be inspired by the technology in the films.
Pious Nyenyewa (Director of Mukudzei): Africa is cool. You know what I mean? To those African kids out there, Oh, Africa is cool. You don’t have to try to be someone that you see in Western music videos. You don’t have to try to emulate that. You don’t have to try to sit there and learn certain accents because it happened to us when we were growing up, right? Try to be as New York as much as possible. But Africa is cool – you can just be the way that you are here. Because on our own, without any influence, we are quite amazing. Why don’t we have those kids from Detroit try to be us, you know?
Raymond Malinga (Director of Herderboy): It’s our comparative advantage. You know, we’re very good at being African. I think if we lean more into that, I think what may come out of it, because for so long we have been dodging it. But now, like if we start leaning into it, you get Kizazi Moto and you get other possibilities.
With Some Of The Endings Of The Films, Could We See More Storytelling In The Future? Are There Any Plans To Expand Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire?
Anthony Silverston (Executive Producer): Yeah, I mean, they’re looking to me, but I’m looking to Disney. I think we would all love to do more. I think a lot of the projects like you say, set up a world and a storyline and characters that could live on, whether it’s a feature film or series. I think that’s the one option. The other option is to do more of these kinds of shorts because there are so many other stories to tell from Africa, so many other countries in Africa that we haven’t even touched on. So it’s all based on the audience response now to see how well it does.
Nthato Mokgata (Director of Surf Sangoma): Ultimately, audience appetite will define what goes further. So at some point, they might make fan fiction and do their own stuff.
Pious Nyenyewa (Director of Mukudzei): Ultimately I think all these guys, you know, speak to Ray because Ray has an animation studio and I have an animation studio, and you’re [Nthato Mokgata] a musician and a filmmaker, right? Apart from this, we’re already doing crazy stuff before, so we also have that. We’re working on that outside this. So if you’re asking if there’s a lot of African content that is at this quality, right, there’s a lot of defining factors that have to be considered, but we are working outside of this to give you give everyone you know, a fresh African experience every time, you know. So, yeah, we’ve got cool stuff for y’all.
Raymond Malinga (Director of Herderboy): Just look out for African content the way you look out for any other content, you know, and when you get it, take it in, you know, that’s it. That’s what I’ll say.
Nthato Mokgata (Director of Surf Sangoma): But I guess his question is, will we see Ndahura again? We fell in love with the boy, will we see the boy in Great Zimbabwe?
Raymond Malinga (Director of Herderboy): Great Zimbabwe, how about that!?
Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire is streaming on Disney+. Check out the trailer below:
