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Manal Murangi, emerging visual artist and social activist.

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After spending two years working with different government agencies as a filmmaker and communication specialist, Manal Murangi decided to nourish her other interests in sociology and anthropology. She made the decision to back to school and pursue a graduate degree with the University of Rhode Island in Marine Affairs.  

 

Murangi, 25, grew up in the DMV area. Her passion for filmmaking started when she a teenager. She recalls watching Moonlight, a film directed by Barry Jenkins. What drew her into the world of cinema was the ability of the medium to coalesce art and activism. Although this incident fueled her trajectory as a filmmaker, Murangi adds that her story started years before that when she was twelve years old and saved all her allowance money to buy a camera. When it was time for university Murangi attended Emerson and joined the Film department. But after spending a year in the program she realized that she wanted a different college experience and elected to take general education courses.

Her return to film arose when she joined the Young Explorer internship program with OceanX. Upon graduating from the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), she took an internship with the consultancy firm LMI which eventually led to a full-time position as a multimedia analyst. Her work within the organization revolved around photography and videography. During this time, she got invited to join an ocean expedition with OceanX where she spent two weeks at sea learning about oceanography and science communication. Murangi credits her experience aboard the OceanXplorer as to where her “passion for filmmaking really reignited” she adds, “again I realized that I could do this in an oceanic context”. 

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This confluence between art and ocean science is the equilibrium that she has been working towards and would eventually lead her to pursuing a master’s degree in marine affairs with the University of Rhode Island (URI). The program Murangi remarks, grants her access to “practices and information that are [kind of] gate kept and [you know] not necessarily accessible to the public”. Gaining access to these knowledge systems helps the filmmaker reach diverse audiences and to “better shape the message” of her films. She adds that the program “facilitates a lot of the growth that filmmakers often have to figure out by themselves”. Today, she is hard at work getting used to being a student again. In the middle of her first semester in graduate school, Manal is engaging in a delicate balancing act of being a student and an artist. In her spare time, when her duties as an academic have been fulfilled, she spends time taking photos. 

“My social activism directly informs my artistic practices. Activism is the framework that I base my art on.” 

As for her social activism, she credits the academic foundation of her undergraduate studies. She filled her schedule with classes in policy and international relations. She spotlights taking an Indigenous film and media course where she was exposed to Native led documentaries. Another class that she brings up was theory of filmmaking. This was not a film 101 course that taught the basics of lighting, chiaroscuro, nor the history of cinema. Murangi explains that the class had more depth and looked at film through a colonial lens. For her, social activism and art are intertwined. “My social activism directly informs my artistic practices. Activism is the framework that I base my art on.” 

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When asked what about what legacy she would want to leave behind, Manal Murnagi wants to be remembered as someone who was fully committed to her work and never did anything she was not completely in love with. 

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