An introduction to How to Build a Library
Notes from an introduction to How to Build a Library (Lekow and King 2025) by Dan Katz, given at our screening in September 2026. Our audience gave this film 3.6 stars.
How to Build a Library is a 2025 documentary film directed and produced by Kenyan filmmaker and musician Maia Lekow and Australian-born filmmaker Christopher King whose previous documentary, The Letter, was Kenya’s entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 2021 Oscars. How To Build A Library premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year, and is predominantly in English with some Kiswahili.
I’m going to start by talking a bit about the production of the film, for those of you interested in how films get made, before going on to talk more about the subject one very close to my heart: libraries, and their importance for a functioning democratic society. (For those of you who don’t know… I am a librarian!)
Background
How To Build a Library started life in 2017 when the subjects of the documentary, Angela Wachuka and Shiro Koinange, approached Lekow and King to shoot a short, 5 minute promo that they could use to promote their project. One thing led to another and the promo turned into a fully-fledged feature film.
When filming began, the general thought was that the project might take a year or two. Having dealt with COVID, political instability, protests, funding issues and babies (Lekow and King are a real life married couple who had two children during this film’s production), the project finally wrapped eight years after they started.
For much of those eight years, they worked as a crew of two: King on camera duties, Lekow on audio. In an interview with Filmmaker Magazine, King said that this was “important to capturing a deeply intimate presence with our subjects, with whom we try to develop a powerful relationship and trust over years of filming.” It also helped, I’m sure, with their very limited, self-funded budget.
In that same interview, King talked about the use of natural lighting in the film. “We used natural lighting to emphasize the stark contrast between the dark, dusty archives and the bright colors of the young subjects, as well as the bustling city outside. This visual juxtaposition highlighted the struggle to bridge the past and present while also accentuating an image of Kenya that we feel has not been experienced by most of the outside world — an image of optimism, of potential, of a cultural renaissance in the heart of the city.” Another example of budgetary restrictions being used to creative effect.
During production, they averaged about 30 days of filming each year. With eight years of footage, Lekow and King could have told a number of very different stories, and I am always fascinated by how documentarians can make coherent narratives out of real life, that isn’t neat or finished. That is the power of editing! At some point, a documentary has to stop — sometimes there is a natural resolution, or they run out of time or money. Maybe the filmmakers decide that they have found the story they want to tell.
The story
So what story does this film tell? It begins with two women, Angela Wachuka and Shiro Koinange, taking on the task of restoring one of Nairobi’s great public buildings - the shockingly dilapidated McMillan Memorial Library, which until 1958 was a whites-only facility.
When Wachuka and Koinange take on the library, they are dealing with a physical building that carries a very complicated history. Colonialism has left an indelible mark on Kenya and its people, and it looms large in the story of reclaiming this public space. Wachuka and Koinange are not library professionals - Wachuka is a publisher and Koinange is a writer - but they quit their jobs to take on this project, armed only with enthusiasm and charisma. There are occasional clashes with library staff who feel their expertise is being undervalued by these interlopers with big ideas, but who also may just be scared of change. As a librarian, I was particularly interested in the fraught discussion about decolonising the Dewey Decimal System – personally, I could watch an entire film on that topic!
I was at a library conference a few weeks ago where the keynote speaker, Danish librarian Marie Østergård, talked about libraries as democratic infrastructure. She spoke about how libraries give extra volume to voices that aren't usually heard. They can provide places for difficult conversations, curiosity, creativity, and even for doing nothing in particular. And they can create the conditions for people to make meaning together. Libraries enable democratic engagement through involvement, literacy, safe spaces, local connections and creative experiences. I was excited to see all of these elements play out in what Wachuka and Koinange are working towards - particularly in the satellite libraries in the smaller communities that they are also taking on.
The filmmakers have described the film as a story about “what happens after the statues fall”. It’s a love letter to Nairobi, to these two women, to librarians and library users, and to anyone who has looked at something broken and decided to build it into something better.
Further reading
Book Bunk (the charity run by the film’s subjects)
How to Build a Library Starts a New Chapter for Public Spaces in Kenya - Pat Mullen, POV, 26 Jan 2025
How to Build a Library: The Bookshelves of Bureaucracy - Courtney Small, POV, 27 Jan 2025
“Capturing a Kenyan Point of View as a Central Theme”: DP Christopher King on How to Build a Library - Filmmaker Magazine, 28 Jan 2025
Go behind the lens with filmmakers Maia Lekow and Christopher King as they reflect on the making of How to Build a Library (video on Facebook) - POV, 25 Aug 2026
How to Build a Library FULL Q&A Directors & Cast (panel discussion on YouTube)- Circle & Square, 13 Sep 2026