In which an utterly useless aid agency tries to save a hippo, along with the rest of that vast but simple continent its odious staff simply call Africa.
The Samaritans is a mockumentary comedy series of a type which has been mined brilliantly in Australia on series like The Games, and Utopia.
It comes from Xeinium, a Kenyan production house, which used Kickstarter to raise US$10,500 for a pilot in August 2013, and is now selling the first two episodes on its own site.
Here is the pilot –
The Samaritans Trailer from Xeinium Productions on Vimeo.
The Vimeo page also contains episode pilots, while the twitter and facebook material has a salutary and non-Western edge. Africa Is a Country has a nice interview with the creator, Hussein Kurji, and an explanation of the Kickstarter story. Fastcocreate adds some more details. He was interviewed at the South African film and TV market, Discop Africa.
After an undergraduate degree in business administration in Switzerland, Kurji went to the US, and ultimately came to Sydney, so he has an Australian connection. He studied at the College of Fine Arts at the University of NSW, graduated with a masters in digital media, and worked here for two years before going back to Kenya.
He has used the episodes or their pilots at various places where NGO players gather, like the UN, which is probably a really useful thing to do. But our fingers are crossed that the series can get some proper presales from much richer countries, who are part of this dialogue because the NGOs are an extension of their culture. Far from the place we see as a simple homogenous mass of carnivores, dictators, crazed armies and plagues.
UPDATE: Xeinium told us by email that ‘We are currently in discussions to produce the entire Season 1 of The Samaritans for international distribution.’ So we go in hope.
