A Ugandan film company that makes low-budget action movies in the slums has found a cult following online – one US fan liked their films so much, he abandoned New York to become an action movie star in Kampala.
It was December 2011 and things were not going well for Alan Hofmanis.
“My girl dumped me the day I bought the wedding ring,” he says. So a friend took him out to a Manhattan bar and, to cheer him up, showed him a video clip on his phone.
It was the trailer for Who Killed Captain Alex? billed as Uganda’s first action movie. The minute-long video showed bloody gun battles, speeded-up kung fu fights and computer-generated helicopters bombing Kampala. If you looked closely, you could see that the machine guns – replicas of Rambo’s M60 – had been welded from scrap metal, and the bullets carved from wood. Much of the action took place in mud. A high-pitched voiceover announced this was the work of Ramon Productions, and gave a phone number.
The clip had an electrifying effect on Hofmanis. “Around 40 seconds into it, I decided: I’m coming to Uganda,” he says. “I realised what I’m looking at makes no sense – but it’s complete genius.”
As programme director for the Lake Placid Film Festival, Hofmanis was used to spotting emerging talent, but he says what he saw here was “off the charts” in its ambition. “In the West, when you have no money, you shoot two people having a conversation… You don’t make a war film.”
Two weeks later he travelled to Uganda. He didn’t bother to call ahead, his mind was made up.
On his first day in Kampala he was at a busy market, when, far in the distance, he spotted a man wearing a T-shirt that said Ramon Film Productions. He immediately gave chase. “I just start running, and I’m chasing him… so he starts running, but we eventually catch up, and we calm down, and I say: ‘Look, I’m just a fan from New York City – can you take me to the film-maker?'”
The answer was, “Yes,” so Hofmanis jumped on the back of a motorcycle and 30 minutes later arrived in Wakaliga, a slum on the outskirts of Kampala. “There are goats everywhere, there are chickens everywhere… That’s raw sewage that’s going right in front of the house – and that actually plays a major role in the films, because it’s life here – it’s dust, it’s heat, it’s children, it’s animals… and it’s pure joy,” he says.
Isaac Nabwana, the film director and brains behind Ramon Productions, was not fazed by the unexpected arrival. “I asked him, why didn’t he call me? He said: ‘I am a friend, I had to reach you.’ That’s when I realised that he’s a true friend,” he says. Nabwana offered his visitor some tea, and they spoke for five hours.
“I thought I was going to meet someone like myself – a little crazy with a camera and some friends – and very quickly I realised this is the real deal,” says Hofmanis.
He had arrived in “Wakaliwood“, where over the past decade, self-taught film maker Nabwana has shot more than 40 low-budget action films. He is not sure how much each one costs to make, but guesses it might be around $200 (£130).
“It is passion that really makes a movie here,” Nabwana says.
The volunteer cast and crew source props wherever they can. The green screen is a piece of cloth bought at the market, draped over a wall. The camera crane is made from spare tractor parts – Dauda Bissaso, one of the regular actors, is a mechanic and builds all the heavy gear and weapons. “He’s just a genius with a blowtorch, he makes everything,” says Hofmanis. Another key member of the team is Bruce U, a Bruce Lee fan who choreographs the fight scenes and runs a kung fu school for the children of Wakaliga.
To recreate gunshot injuries, they use free condoms from the local health clinic, filled with fake blood – they burst quite realistically. They used to be filled with real animal blood, but when one of the actors got sick with brucellosis, a disease passed on from cows, they switched to food colouring.
Fake blood is needed in vast quantities because the films are violent – but in a cartoonish way, and quite unlike the real violence Nabwana witnessed growing up during Uganda’s 1981-86 civil war. “I don’t put that in my movies, what I saw in the past,” he says. “I include comedy – there was no comedy in the violence which I witnessed.”
His cinematic hero is Chuck Norris, although he also likes Rambo and The Expendables. Hofmanis, on the other hand, compares him to directors like Guillermo del Toro, Robert Rodriguez and Martin Scorsese – “in terms of creativity and what they’re contributing to cinema”.
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Source: BBC