I Want To Be A House

Nataka Kua Nyumba

After years of labouring in a colonial farmhouse, a housekeeper in Nairobi tells her co-worker that she wishes to abandon her body and simply become the house. Her goal, in a sense, is: to disappear. Filmmaker Oskar Weimar accompanies her patiently, in calm shots that are first reminiscent of still lifes, then of observational cinema – while he himself ghosts through the shots as a white homeowner. Weimar and his collaborators infuse this woman’s mysterious act of defiance with a deep emotional life, portraying a group, a present, a moment in history through the act of an individual. Here, an unsentimental turning away from the world makes for a light-footed turn towards cinema. A film that sits somewhere between meditation, transformation and dance formation.