Uganda National Theatre

A 10-day international film festival will take place in Uganda between September 15 and September 25, 2005.

The festival, Amakula Kampala International Film Festival, will seek to inspire a thriving cinema culture in Uganda through workshops, seminars and discussions on practical and theoretical aspects of film production hosted by local, regional and international film directors and cultural producers. Amakula is this year inaugurating a competition for African short films (up to 30 minutes) in which the top prize will be Golden Impala awarded on the festival’s closing night. A jury comprising international and local film experts will preside over the competition. The second edition of the annual Amakula Kampala will focus on story lines as stories are specific to cinema as they are to African culture. Amakula, says festival co-director Alice Smits, will address issues like, ‘What are our stories, what do they mean to us, and how do we communicate our stories through film?’

With films selected with a special focus on narrative structure and content, announces festival co-director Lee Ellington adds, special story-telling performances with stories from the past, present and future expressed through the forms of the spoken word, recital, rap, music, dance, and puppetry, will be featured throughout the festival. A symposium on storytelling with panel discussions and presentations will focus on the festival’s theme, Story Lines.

A wide range of screenings from all over the world will take place in diverse locations in Kampala. A special feature of Amakula Kampala is its determination to seek its audiences in their local surroundings, says Smits. The festival will be centered in the National Theatre and Plaza Theatre in the heart of Kampala. It will also appear in Ndere Centre, Bat Valley and twenty video halls spread over five divisions in the Ugandan capital where Luganda translations of a selection of films will be provided. Besides the film programmes, says Ellington, the festival will offer performances from various disciplines engaging with the art of cinema in often surprising ways.

One of the films that is likely to generate interest in Kizunguzungu, a short film written, directed and produced by Mwangaza Kang’anga of Tanzanian. Kang’anga, an actress, also stars in the film. Kizunguzungu is the story of a highly respected professor. An expert in HIV issues, few suspect him of being the devil in disguise that he is. His son’s fiancée is also his mistress! A seven day workshop designed for journalists and writers with an interest in writing on film will be offered to writers from Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda.

Believing that film criticism is an important aspect of a vibrant film culture and industry as well as a locus for reflection, the construction of taste, judgement and the mobilization of an audience, the Amakula Kampala organisation decided to initiate this year a workshop specifically devoted to critical writing on film. Nairobi-based arts critic, Ogova Ondego from ArtMatters.Info and artMatters Critics Guild, will conduct the workshop, bringing a widespread knowledge of international film culture as well as a keen insight into the regional situation. ‚ Analysts, observes Ondego, have pointed out that lack of critics or sloppy journalism is undermining the audiovisual media sector of the East African region. This could partly explain why filmmaking is taking so long to get rooted in the landscape of the region.

The workshop will focus on the various approaches to the writing of film criticism and theory accompanied by the reading of selected pertinent material, while the function of cultural criticism will be explored. With attending guest directors the technique of interviewing will be excercised and research methods will be explored via available materials. Participants will be engaged in the writing of film reviews of selected films from the festival. The articles produced will be printed in a festival paper that will be presented on the last day of the workshop which will feature a discussion in which significant points that developed out of the previous week will be brought before the public. This is the second time a critics workshop will be taking place in East Africa after another event conducted at the ZIFF’s Festival of the Dhow Countries (July 3-8, 2005) in Zanzibar.

Ogova Ondego, with Dr Martin Mhando in Zanzibar

Organised by ZIFF and Southern African Communications in Development (SACOD), the workshop brought together film journalists and filmmakers from Tanzania mainland, Zanzibar, Uganda, Kenya, United Kingdom, and Italy who discussed how film and other media can affect the practice of human rights and what problems media practitioners in eastern and southern Africa face as they go about their work.

The workshop also explored media activism, human rights, new media, and the obstacles media practitioners face as they go about their work besides arts criticism. The aim was to advance the understanding of Human Rights issues and Media practice in film and the general media in East and Southern Africa, sharing experiences amongst media workers in the area of human rights and the media's role in society, and exploring various tactics to different cultural contexts in relation to human rights issues in Africa. Principal facilitators were Martin Mhando, a Tanzanian filmmaker and academic, and Ondego, an arts and culture critic from Kenya. While Dr Mhando led discussions in media and human rights in general, Ondego tackled new media—mainly the Internet—and human rights.

Back to Top