LEADER 00000cgm a2200409 i 4500 
003    CaSfKAN 
005    20121231183435.0 
006    m        c         
007    vz uzazuu 
007    cr una---unuuu 
008    140927p20142009cau087        o   vleng d 
028 52 1043291|bKanopy 
035    (OCoLC)914219981 
040    NZEN|cNZEN|erda 
099    Streaming Video Kanopy 
245 02 A Time There Was :|bStories from the Last Days of Kenya 
       Colony.|h[Kanopy electronic resource] 
264  1 [San Francisco, California, USA] :|bKanopy Streaming,
       |c2014. 
300    1 online resource (1 video file, 88 min.) :|bdigital, 
       stereo., sound, color 
336    two-dimensional moving image|2rdacontent 
337    computer|2rdamedia 
338    online resource|2rdacarrier 
344    digital 
347    video file|bMPEG-4|bFlash 
518    Originally produced by National Film Board of Canada in 
       2009. 
520    It’s early afternoon, May 1, 1955 — and Donald McWilliams 
       finds himself with other British soldiers in Ndyeia Gorge 
       in central Kenya. At their feet a Mau Mau fighter lies 
       dying, mortally wounded by their gunfire. Above them all, 
       the vast skies of the Rift Valley. McWilliams is hardly 
       out of his teens — a child of wartime London, stationed to
       Kenya for his national service. Raised on the romance of 
       Empire, he’d imagined a great African adventure. But the 
       look in the eyes of that dying rebel sets his life on 
       another course. Over fifty years later McWilliams 
       confronts his past with creative audacity and unflinching 
       self-inquiry in A Time There Was: Stories from the Last 
       Days of Kenya Colony. With historical rigour and visual 
       lyricism, he combines his own photographic record of the 
       times with original animation and archival imagery, 
       crafting a film diary of singular beauty and a thoughtful 
       account of the Mau Mau Rebellion — one of the most 
       contentious episodes in Britain’s imperial history. The 
       conflict arose from long simmering resentment among Kikuyu
       who had lost vast tracts of fertile land to white colonial
       farmers. The rebels were portrayed as depraved savages 
       intent on attacking the civilizing forces of British 
       settlers, but in fact atrocities were committed by both 
       sides — and Africans died in far greater numbers than 
       Europeans. McWilliams frames his own story with testimony 
       from other participants in the events. Mau Mau veteran 
       Mwaria Njuma, who took the Mau Mau oath to reclaim the 
       native birthright of Kenyans, details the on-the-ground 
       struggle – as a freedom fighter in the forests, and a 
       prisoner in the British detention camps. Activist lawyer 
       Achrroo Kapila, from Kenya’s Asian minority, defended 
       hundreds of political dissidents, including future 
       president Jomo Kenyatta. And John Nottingham broke rank 
       with fellow colonial officials to embrace the cause of 
       independence. In the tradition of his mentor Norman 
       McLaren, McWilliams employs a rich palette of filmic 
       devices, finding fresh meaning in the random gestures and 
       expressions of old newsreels and snapshots, and arranging 
       his evocative narration within a soundscape that features 
       Kenyan and Mau Mau songs alongside original compositions 
       by jazzman Kevin Dean. With A Time There Was McWilliams 
       completes a remarkable autobiographical trilogy that 
       includes The Passerby and The Fifth Province, 
       distinguishing himself as one of the great poetic 
       essayists of Canadian cinema. 
534    |pOriginally produced|caMontreal, Quebec, National Film 
       Board of Canada, c2009. 
538    Mode of access: World Wide Web. 
600 10 McWilliams, Donald,|d1935-. 
650  0 Mau-Mau|zKenya. 
650  0 War|xRebellion|zLondon. 
650  0 Imperialism|zGreat Britain. 
650  0 Autobiography. 
655  7 Documentary films.|2lcgft 
700 1  McWilliams, Donald,|d1935-,|efilm director. 
710 2  Kanopy (Firm) 
856 40 |uhttps://naperville.kanopy.com/node/43292|zAvailable on 
       Kanopy 
856 42 |zCover Image|uhttps://www.kanopy.com/node/43292/external-
       image