Murder on the Lake

Almost two years later, the film that I assistant produced in the summer of 2008 has been released: "Murder on the Lake" aired on BBC 4 the other night. So far, reviews have been very positive.

This documentary was far more work than I would have thought possible. Seeing the final, 90-minute piece was far more rewarding than I would have thought possible, too. Scenes that flit by in the final version, or don't appear at all, took so much time to set up. Each interview required hours of preparation. The results were worth it.

The film is about Joan Root, the one-time wildlife filmmaker who became deeply enmeshed in the strange, sometimes frightening scene around Lake Naivasha after her divorce in the 1980s and then was murdered in her home there in 2006.

Naivasha is in some ways emblematic of the larger problems facing Kenya. A handful of whites live in gorgeous houses along the shore of Lake Naivasha. Next to them are the flower farms that contribute so much to the economy but also pay their workers very poorly and suck huge amounts of water from the lake. And behind are the dusty slums where hundreds of thousands of people live in terrible poverty. The lake is gorgeous, and so are the flowers that grow next to it, but sometimes it seems that such beauty comes at too high a human cost.

Naivasha is also different from the rest of Kenya. Nowhere else in this country have I seen the anger and the hardness on all sides that I saw there. The film does not solve Joan Root's murder, but the traits that make Naivasha such an unsettling place were as much to blame as anything else.

Comments

[dickie]

any chance we can watch this on streaming video? I followed this story a bit while living in Nairobi

[Barbara Herbin]

The documentary was fascinating and left me wanting to know more, in particular about Diana Bunny and her cook.
I would like to know what your impressions of her were Nick, and if the documentary team thought she was responsible for Joan's death because that was the impression I was left with at the end of the film.

[Paul]

In the US and would love to see this!

[Deb]

How do I get a copy of the film? I am in Naivasha and did not see it when aired on BBC and cannot now access it.

[Sue Painter]

Stick to the facts when you make a documentary next time.I was shocked the way Diana Bunny had been portrayed, and there was no need for it. You very obviously don't know her at all.