Once Upon A Time In Wakaliwood: Ugandan Communal Cinema
In 2010, a man named Issac Nabwana (given the nickname Nabwana I.G.G. by his peers) set out to shoot a movie in his hometown of Wakaliga, located within the ghettos of Nateete in the central African nation of Uganda. Located just outside the capital city of Kampala, Wakaliga is one of the poorest neighborhoods in one of the poorest countries on Earth. Many of its residents would have no way to even see a movie, as the ghettos have only sporadic use of electrical power. Access to the internet is out of the question. What’s more, there’s very limited access to clean water and plumbing.
The idea of making a film under such harsh living conditions must have seemed frivolous and laughable at first, as I.G.G. was unable to afford hiring any kind of professional crew. He had to enlist the talents and services of a number of people in the village to assist with every aspect of the production. An ex-helicopter pilot in the Ugandan Bush War in the 80’s, he’d never made a film before. He grew up in love with violent action movies and was fascinated by Hong Kong martial arts stars like Bruce Lee, Jet Li and Wang Yu and blockbuster tough guys like Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Chuck Norris. He wanted to produce those kinds of movies purely, without a trace of irony.
the poster for Who Killed Captain Alex? - da supa action supreme
And so began one of the great miracle stories of contemporary communal cinema. The fruit of I.G.G’s do-it-yourself efforts would be 2011’s Who Killed Captain Alex?. It’s an outlandish, 69-minute kill-and-laugh fest that as of this writing, has racked up nearly seven million views on Youtube and started an entire cottage industry of handmade, community-driven action filmmaking within these ghettos. Aided by all the village tinkerers and gearheads he could find, I.G.G. and his crew built camera equipment, prop guns and other fake weapons out of scrap metal from a machine shop a stone's throw from his house.
In a news segment for the BBC, I.G.G’s equipment-forging friend demonstrates a rotating minigun he made from a lawnmower. For the gunshot wounds, condoms filled with red food coloring were tied with fishing lines to the actors chests and then blown up with small fireworks. The actors are, of course, all nonprofessionals shooting around their day jobs. Many of the male actors were proficient in martial arts and this would be the reason the fight scenes in I.G.G’s productions look legit. He would go on to make 40 features this way, turning the village into a kind of open-air movie studio.
It was cleverly named Wakaliwood. Since 2010, I.G.G. has managed to shoot - yes, you read that right - 40 films there, including another full length feature called Bad Black (2016). I’d be hesitant to give it a collective name like, “Ugandan Populist Cinema” as that would make it sound like a political movement. “Ugandan Communal Cinema,” feels more appropriate. These features have become immensely popular at festivals, garnering audience favorite awards and building strong followings mostly by word of mouth. They’re different from other so-called “bad” movies that gain cult followings. Despite their awkwardness and hokeyness, it doesn’t feel right to place them alongside cult items like The Room, Troll 2, Birdemic: Shock and Terror, Samurai Cop or Miami Connection. They’re too interesting, and they lack the vanity and carelessness of other hilariously schlocky fare.
In fact, I would argue that Wakaliwood’s output is not even bad at all. Every element in an I.G.G. film that looks unconvincing or feels underdeveloped is such because there simply wasn’t enough money to make it come off any better. Whereas with most hilariously bad movies that play well in relaxed group settings or on late night theater circuits, the badness of the movie stems from the director’s ineptitude and vanity, or with the visible inability or unwillingness of the filmmakers to have learned how movies work. Watch the short documentary, Once Upon A Time in Uganda and you’ll learn that Issac Nabwana knows how they work.
The poster for Bad Black - Supa deadlier toughest of da tough!
The budget for Who Killed Captain Alex? was estimated to be around $200, though there are some claims it may have reportedly cost around $85 and the film looks to have accounted for every penny of it. The camera work is chaotic. There are times when the handheld shakiness gives it a sense of urgency but the action is frenetic and overheated. Shots frequently don’t match across cuts, making for a jarring experience. Everything plays out in medium and long shots, making it difficult to emphasize details or nuance with the performances. There looks to have been adequate natural light and yet the images are hazy and dull. The sound mostly is a mess of different noises heaped onto each other. Continuity is a problem. Scenes taking place at night look to have been lit by vehicular headlights that were just pointed at the actors and switched on. The person speaking or fighting will have their back to the camera. The actors are noticeably shaking their prop guns wildly to simulate firing, the flare from the rounds leaving the barrels having been digitally added later. The special effects involving explosions and helicopter attacks are dire, to say the least.
But this is not a kind of moviemaking where any of that matters. You don’t just accept those shortfalls watching Who Killed Captain Alex? or Bad Black, enjoying the movie in spite of the clumsy manner in which things are handled. Instead you kind of ignore them, because the level of passion and cooperation and joy in what everyone was doing would make a moot point of pointing to the visual cheapness as a detraction. These are not films you watch ironically, despite their total self-awareness. They have a purity in their honesty and conviction and demonstrate the best possible use of the money that was put up to make them. They’re the best results to have gotten under these severe conditions. And in their operational success, they’re good movies.
The self-awareness of Wakaliwood action is evident in the VJ audio tracks placed over the movies. I thought VJ meant “video jockey,” in the manner of a disc jockey for music but it means “video joker.” VJ Emmie can be heard riffing on all of Wakaliwood’s productions. Tone-wise, he’s somewhere between a teacher, a narrator, a hype man and a crass mocker. His remarks come often and play at a level somewhere between Mystery Science Theater-ing the material and praising it. There isn’t a scene in which his wisecracking can’t be heard, though in AGFA’s Blu-Ray release that includes both Who Killed Captain Alex? and Bad Black, this feature can be switched off.
The VJ’s good-natured ribbing adds another layer to what we’re experiencing: A shot of some men approaching another man stirring something boiling in a metal trash can with a large spoon. VJ Emmie does all the voices on his own: “I’m making German food.”
“German food?”
“Yeah. We found German tourists. We’re cooking them.” “Ohhh. Very, very good. Delicious.”
“Save me the head. Like Predator.”
I won’t lie: VJ Emmie’s contributions took more than a little getting used to for me. I’m inclined to say it upstages the material, belittling the people on screen. But the self-aware element it adds to the movie further complicates easy assessments of what these movies are for western viewers. It’s a commentary that demonstrates there isn’t a thought we could have about the squalor of the environment in which the films are made, or the ridiculousness of their storylines or details that the filmmakers aren’t aware of. And the VJ track is teaching us things in the process, like lessons about provincial life in Uganda and the self-deprecating sense of humor that residents have about it.
There’s a moment in Bad Black when a window is smashed by a man with the butt of a gun barrel. VJ Emmie: “He used a Ugandan Key!” Or the VJ considering Alan Ssani Hofmanis, a white layabout who left New York and came to Uganda to collaborate full time with I.G.G. and never left, typically playing a white villain who gets his ass kicked in every production: “His girl left him. Now he have to act in Uganda!”
It’s kind of amazing the way the joking demonstrates a genuine enthusiasm for the movies while mocking them. It’s an affectionate mocking. It’s almost as if I.G.G. added every possible thing he thought would make his films a hoot to watch in the makeshift screening houses of his hometown. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do to make the members of his community smile. This lack of shame and ego is what must make these films so delightful and popular around the world. They can be enjoyed in a pure way. They make the po-faced, world-weary productions of Hollywood action look cynical and pretentious in their presentation of sensitive warriors, begrudgingly redeeming humanity despite the best efforts of its corruption and defeatism to make the task as unenviable as possible for them. Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just saving the world.
Some of VJ Emmie’s best lines: “Sing Dolly Parton! We love Dolly Parton!” “Are you crazy? That’s my wife!” “Wife? I thought that is a goat!” “This is how we do action in Uganda!” “Will you marry me....I prefer men.......What? Noooo! Come back!” “Everybody in Uganda knows kung fu!” “Even mafias need to relax.” “The Ugandan Bruce Lee. We’ll call him Bruce U!” “Supa kicker!” “A Supa master of kung fu!” “Commandos!” “Tiger Mafia has good panties!” “Supa deadly commandos on a mission! “Non-stop deadly action!” “UGANDA!” “I’ll kill you all...in sequel!” Half of the VJ’s uncontrollable outbursts include either a high pitched cackle that’s reminiscent of Woody Woodpecker, or simply shouting out in the midst of a chaotic scene: “MOVIE!”
look past the bad camera work and editing and you’ll see that the kung fu in Wakaliwood productions looks fairly legit. Everyone involved is trained in martial arts, and a good deal of work went into the fight choreography.
Imagine, if you will, making a movie where everyone involved is not just lacking in a proper film education but access to one provided by basic electricity that would enable the internet. When new filmmakers mention in interviews about having to make films “with nothing,” it’s a given that it’s an not expression of “nothing” that encompasses clean water and electricity, let alone a core conception of how movies work from a technical standpoint. How to match shots, record sound, edit scenes, block and direct actors. No three-act structure. No formal conceptions of “mise-en-scene.” No film grammar to relate to the production team. You’re watching them learn as they go. To watch a Wakaliwood production is to watch the best aspects of Amateurism, a cause of which I’m an ardent supporter. Their finished products are the results of filming their impressions of cinema from their earthbound perspective, uncluttered as it is by the dictates of money and show business.
This can be seen in what the films are about. They’re not simply imitations of Hollywood action plots. They’re based on the filmmakers' experiences and the movies are always partially about their own making. Who Killed Captain Alex? follows a supposed war between an organized crime syndicate and a government paramilitary group whose eponymous leader is killed halfway through the movie. Vengeance is sworn on the syndicate - called the “Tiger Mafia”. Gang leader Richard kidnaps a commando and executes him on live TV as retaliation for his brother’s murder. It’s a petty and endless war, reflecting how the filmmakers and the community (one and the same body) feel about the sectarian skirmishes and violent conflicts they’ve seen all their lives. It’s no coincidence that the movie concludes with TV footage of real life Ugandan conflicts in which civilians were caught in the middle of the carnage.
A key scene in Who Killed Captain Alex? happens early on, when Captain Alex’s men are gathered at a tavern with live music and partying with locals and residents. Actors in the foreground hold glasses of small amounts of water mixed with the paint that was used to paint the tavern walls as substitutes for cocktails. The actors in the background pantomime drinking alcohol from empty bottles. A fight breaks out because a soldier made a pass at a mafia man’s girlfriend. Captain Alex bursts in to get his men under control and scold them for their dishonorable behavior. “If you can’t handle yourselves here, what will happen in combat?” It’s an anecdote taken from the director’s own time in the Ugandan War.
movie!
Later a helicopter attack (rendered with stunningly hokey special effects) levels an entire city and this too is based on I.G.G’s memory of surviving a helicopter bombing in 1985 by running from it with his grandmother. And yet he doesn't believe that placing that sequence alongside a staggering number of bloody action scenes in which combattants are riddled with bullets, disarmed with karate kicks and mocked by VJ Emmie is out of place. To him, everything he filmed is equally worthy of attention. Everything is worthy of the screen. You can sense his emotional attachment to all the elements of the film, and their having been emboldened by being filmed. The camera that films it is sacred. And anything the camera films becomes sacred too.
The actors are not professionals and although I.G.G. never has them doing anything too difficult, even when they’re blatantly overacting, it’s hard to fault them for their belief in what they’re doing. They throw themselves around in muddy canals and dirt, against walls, dying over window ledges upside down. They take real-looking beatings. It looks uncomfortable. But the performances match the tone of everything else: energetic and executed with conviction. We feel the passion that informed it, as well as the effort it took to pull it off. That’s why the substandard look of everything never interferes with our experience. Our brains are telling us to look past those limitations, because I.G.G. is constantly assuring us, through the joy of what he’s filming, that they’re not limitations at all.
This is demonstrated in a small moment that I love. Richard sits down and watches a news broadcast used as a sort of exposition for the escalating violence. It’s broadcast on “Ramon TV,” Ramon being the name of the production company for I.G.G’s films, which is itself a combination of the names of his actual grandmothers, Rachel and Monica. Rachel raised the director, along with many other orphaned neighborhood children, on her own during the chaos of the civil war and the I.G.G. dedicates his film to her. The woman cast as the news anchor is supposed to relate the events we’ve just seen on TV. But the actress playing her is fighting back a smile for the most of the shot conveying her broadcast, a fight she eventually loses. She’s simply having too much fun, visibly delighted to be appearing in a movie, to affect the character of a serious newscaster.
the joy of acting in a movie transcending the necessity for suspension of disbelief
Bad Black’s story is deeper and even more considered. A fight over a woman in a town square sees a man kicked into a fruit stand that falls to the ground, squashing all its contents. The owner of the stand falls to her knees and cries at the waste and the blow to her livelihood. Her life depended on that fruit stand. The precarity of her position is serious. Where so many action movies give us vehicles and individuals careening through crowded places and destroying so much within them simply because it looks good on camera - fruit carts, chicken trucks, huge panes of class being carried across the street at precisely the right time - this movie stops to consider the consequences of all that fun destruction.
A little girl comes out and tells the vendor who is her grandmother not to cry, that it’s going to be alright. Later, her uncle at home is telling the grandmother to let her go so they can focus on their own troubles. Having been thrown away by her own family, she leaves home and walks the streets, falling in with a child street gang along with a host of other homeless children discarded by abusive, indifferent parents. They sing and make music in the dark. It’s scarily realistic, looking like documentary footage or an investigative journalism segment.
The children beg on the streets for coins and give what little they get to a gang boss in exchange for shelter and care. The little girl is accused of stealing and threatened with a gun to her head. She looks to be 8 or 9 years old and her trauma appears disturbingly convincing. Later, she kills the mean boss by shooting him with his own gun and grows up to be Bad Black, the most feared gang leader in the slum. She gets entangled with a white American doctor-without-borders (Hofmanis), and he’s then trained by a child martial arts expert called “Wesley Snipes,” to fight her men.
I saw Bad Black at a film festival at Chicago's Davis Theater. I was working a merchandise table for the video rental store I volunteered for back in 2017. My fellow volunteers and I were 5 or 6 of about a dozen people in the theater. The video store’s owner set up the screening, acquiring a DVD copy of the film by requesting it personally from I.G.G. himself. The screening was a raucous and highly pleasurable experience, charged with the feeling that what we were seeing was special and exciting - that ANYTHING could happen. I was doubled over with incredulous laughter, while being awed and humbled by the humor and passion on display. This principled filmmaker had made something I hadn’t seen before, essentially making his own music to dance to and building all the instruments needed for playing it from scratch.
One of Issac Nabwana’s (pictured in blue) film crews in his open air Wakaliwood Studio
These principles announce themselves to us in the sequence that opens every I.G.G. film as a sort of precursor to the display of the Ramon Productions logo - the equivalent of the roaring lion of M.G.M. or the globe-spanning letters spelling out “Universal”: A badly green-screened helicopter touches down in the middle of Times Square and some Ugandan commandos carrying automatic weapons disembark, as if ready for their brand of action to invade American shores. The image looks like literally everything the TV news media try to scare us with. But then those effects dissolve into a shot of I.G.G. and the film crew in Wakaliga, filming the effect with a green screen and I.G.G. laughing because an actor is apprehensive about dropping from the height he’s hanging from. “Commandos aren’t afraid to jump, you know,” he says laughing.
The company logo sequence for Wakaliwood’s Ramon Productions in which the ghetto commandos attack New York and literally blow up Katz’s Deli specifically and I’m not making that up.
This is the Third World speaking to us, using film as its plainest language, with violent action as the dialect. It’s a language learned from what that world enjoyed from projected movies on screens that were little more than bedsheets taped to local brick walls. It’s a language learned from what it saw reflected in everyday life where its inhabitants grew up, and the kind of slaughter and mayhem that was, sadly, a major part of their lives. It’s a community where so many people have so little, and yet they’re able to appropriate what is arguably a decadent, destructive form of cinema in which they see beauty, universality and affirmation.
It would be great to see new directors emerge from Nateete, especially women. I would also like to see what I.G.G. could do with a large budget. Or what he would bring to a straight drama or comedy, with no action or violence. But he insists in interviews that he favors this kind of material for its potential to reach the broadest possible audience. He makes stars of his neighbors while meditating his beloved homeland’s relationship to murder and terror as a tragic influence on the political fates of their country and their lives. It’s as if filming violence like this is a kind of national therapy, recreating the harrowing imagery of war and bloodshed in an abstract way that highlights its absurdity and unnaturalness, using film to process and lighten the bleak realities of poverty and desperation with stunning vibrancy.
Who Killed Captain Alex? and Bad Black are available for free on Youtube. For supporting Wakaliwood, links to Patreon and the Wakaliwood merch store are provided with the feature.
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