Filmed in the Lamu Archipelago of Kenya, FLIP-FLOTSAM is the intriguing story of the epic adventures of East Africa’s most prevalent footwear; Flip-Flops.
From the factory floors of downtown Mombasa, this colorful footwear transports us to the ancient Swahili island of Lamu. Cheap, cheerful, practical and popular, they are everywhere; aboard dhows and donkeys, bearing loads and left dormant on the doormats. Worn-in, worn-out, and discarded at the mercy of the Indian Ocean, their story continues.
Sea-borne for years, colonized by barnacles and boarded by swimming Crabs, the Flip-Flotsam eventually comes ashore on distant coastlines.
In the far north of Kenya, on a wild island beach, the weathered Flip-Flops are gathered by beach-combing islanders, who in the shade of their thatched villages carve figures from the old soles. Soon crabs appear, fish, dolphins and turtles too. Assembling them as mobiles, the villagers set sail with their creations, to sell them back along the shop-lined shores from where the Flip-Flotsam came.
Flip Flotsam (2004 / 26 minutes / documentary)
Directors + Producers: Etienne Oliff & Lucy Bateman
Narrator: Ian Mgagna
Music: Richard Blair Diphant
Sound: James Snowden & Gavin Marshall
Country: U.S.A (in English)