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Paper short abstract

This paper critically analyses two award-winning Kenyan films with a view of unpacking the different ways in which they explore new ways of expressing queer sexuality in Kenya. The focus is on highlighting how film as a popular culture is the new tool of fashioning queer sexuality in contemporary Kenya.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the renewed fashioning and making of queer sexuality through the popular culture and media format of film in Kenya. Through a critical discourse analysis of two recent Kenyan award-winning popular film texts by the Nest Collection titled, Stories of Our Lives and Tuko Macho, the paper focuses on how the film genre has become a frontier of exploring the moral boundaries and interrogating the social forms of tolerance/intolerance towards sexual minorities and queer sexuality in Kenya. In a largely homophobic social and cultural context that often limits open expression of all forms of gay/lesbian sexuality, we examine how local films have become effective tools of fashioning and envisioning new ways of enabling and flourishing same-sex relationships and cultivating social structures that appreciate sexual choices and different ways of pleasure.