How Kenya was exposed to sex tourists in an Italian soft porn movie shot in the 70s

The scene of the 1978 film shot in Kenya begins with two ladies driving a green Range Rover from Market Street and heading towards a petrol station that used to be below the dome of the New Florida Night Club, which would later be demolished.

The driver gets off and is soon found in the garage pit under the car having sex with the mechanic. The other lady, meanwhile, pleasures herself in the car and these sexual activities end when an older lady is seen driving into the garage and uttering some words only for the mechanic to run away.

The ladies then drive to Embakasi Airport.

The above is a description of a 3-minute video cut from “Black Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade,” a 1978 film as seen in a review article on Owaahh.com.

The movie was shot in Kenya before the storyline shifts to the U.S. and even though it had such detailed travelogue scenes, Kenyans would not want to be associated with it largely because it was porn.

“Black Emanuelle” was basically an Italian softcore exploitation film from 1975 that follows an erotic adventure of Mae Jordan (real name Laura Gemser), who was a globe-trotter, pleasure-seeking investigative journalist known to her viewers as “Emanuelle”.

The sequel, which was shot mostly in Kenya, began in 1975, when Mae Jordan, who was on an East African Airways flight to Kenya for an assignment ended up on an erotic adventure with her hosts and several other people.

Three years later, Joe D’Amato, the Italian porn director of the movie, came back to Kenya for more and this resulted in the “Black Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade” sequel.

As a travelogue, it is documented that the films showed “panoramic views of the landscape, as well as, scenes of the cultural diversity Laura’s character experiences in her work.”

In the 1975 film, the scenes were shot in Nairobi, Watamu, Gedi, Mara, Amboseli, Kikuyi and several other places.

Other scenes of the soft-porn sequel were shot at the Kenol Ruaraka fuel pump, and at different homes in upmarket Nairobi, according to accounts.

While acting as one chasing a story from Kenya to the United States, Mae Jordan had sex with so many people at several areas in the sequel, including the Gedi ruins, and another with a group of traditional dancers in what appeared like a village at the Coast.

The movies became a success in the 1970s, widely consumed by European audiences as they were translated into other languages.

But in Kenya, when discussing the history of the country as a film destination, the “Black Emmanuelle” movies are never mentioned, even though it may be accountable the number of tourists who trooped the East African nation following the release of the films.

In spite of being shot in Kenya, no Kenyan has since been credited in the film, as they were mostly extras as guides and fuel attendants.

This may come as good news though to the majority of Kenyans who wouldn’t want to have anything to do with the films.