Daniel Kalu­uya and Kib­we Tavares: ​‘Gen­tri­fi­ca­tion is hard to dramatise’

Daniel Kalu­uya and Kib­we Tavares make their fea­ture film debut with The Kitchen, a dystopi­an dra­ma that fol­lows Izi (Kane Robin­son) whose focus is on get­ting out of the Kitchen, the last sur­viv­ing social hous­ing estate in the now total­ly ster­ile cap­i­tal of London.

LWLies: Com­mu­ni­ty ver­sus indi­vid­u­al­ism is a theme I real­ly con­nect­ed with­in the film. How did you decide to explore that through a father/​son story?

Kalu­uya: I feel like a lot of the vil­lains of the com­mu­ni­ty are the par­ents who don’t tend to their kids. And this is the arche­type that is most preva­lent in our com­mu­ni­ty, the father that is absent. That’s the indi­vid­u­al­ism [ver­sus] com­mu­ni­ty in a famil­ial sense, me ver­sus fam­i­ly. While we’re explor­ing the real human sto­ry, then we got more of the plot that’s about this com­mu­ni­ty that is try­ing to fight for their togeth­er­ness. You got this man that doesn’t want to be togeth­er with any­one. He needs it. He doesn’t want it.

Could you talk about how you built out the world of The Kitchen as well as the estate itself? 

Tavares: Robots of Brix­ton [ani­mat­ed short film] was part of my archi­tec­ture degree and The Kitchen start­ed not too long after, so my way into films at the time was as a design­er. I start­ed to build this aes­thet­ic of col­lage; I was real­ly keen to sort of see how I could do that in a longer for­mat. I guess for me London’s a bit like lots of lit­tle vil­lages stuck next to each oth­er. And I guess in our world, all these vil­lages have been pushed out to the end, and The Kitchen is London’s last vil­lage. The idea was to try and make some­thing that feels recog­nis­able, even though the aes­thet­ic is very dif­fer­ent. But how do we do that in a lan­guage that is a mix­ture of dig­i­tal as well as physical?

How did Ian Wright get involved? His role is rem­i­nis­cent of Samuel L Jackson’s in Do the Right Thing. 

Kalu­uya: He added so much depth to the role. He was recep­tive. He wasn’t ​‘wrong and strong’; he was like, ​‘Teach me, I want to learn.’ And he went in two foot­ed – pun intended.

I think we was real­ly inspired by Do the Right Thing actu­al­ly, and inspired by La Haine, and inspired by City of God, a lot of
these sem­i­nal city films. And pirate radio was mas­sive when I was younger, it was so dis­tinct to your area. These areas were defined by who the hosts were, they were play­ing the real songs and they were real­ly talk­ing to the com­mu­ni­ty. I think in Lon­don, music is so preva­lent. Like a lot of things, going out is cen­tred around a musi­cal event, and we want­ed the film to reflect that.

Hope Ikpoku Jnr’s char­ac­ter, Sta­ples, is kind of a Robin Hood fig­ure. How did his sto­ry­line develop? 

Tavares: He became much more inte­gral through­out the process. If Ian Wright’s char­ac­ter is the voice of The Kitchen, Sta­ples is the action. He’s the one who’s gonna say, ​‘Actu­al­ly, this is our home,’ and just say, ​‘No, I’m gonna pro­vide for my com­mu­ni­ty, because it’s my home and I’ve got a right to be here.’ Yeah, I guess it’s Robin Hood in a way. But there were many iter­a­tions. There’s one where he’s like Robin Hood for hire, or a for-prof­it Robin Hood.

Sur­veil­lance is a key theme in the film. How much do you think about the sur­veil­lance of black people?

Kalu­uya: What is it like, of the top 10 most sur­veilled cities in the world Lon­don is num­ber three and the rest of them are in North Korea. So I think it’s some­thing that we live with and that’s on us. Sub­con­scious­ly, I just feel like we just scru­ti­nise every­thing we do. Some­one does some­thing stu­pid to us and then how we react is scru­ti­nised. ​‘What the fucks every­one look­ing at? Look at him, look at her!’ It’s that cir­cle; it’s exhaust­ing. So a way to just express it is to say ​‘Fuck it, it is what it is,’ and let peo­ple make their deci­sions, if they get it they get it, if they don’t they don’t.

Gen­tri­fi­ca­tion and London’s dimin­ish­ing Black pop­u­la­tion are key themes in the film too.

Tavares: I guess for me, gen­tri­fi­ca­tion is a hard one to drama­tise. How do you make it feel imme­di­ate because, actu­al­ly, it’s quite slow and painful. A height­ened world allowed us to be a bit more direct and aggres­sive with it. I do think com­mu­ni­ty and what your home means is some­thing that we dis­cuss, and also this idea of peo­ple get­ting pushed out. As then you lose what makes Lon­don Lon­don. What makes Lon­don feel rich, diverse, and so full of life