25th Best & Great Date will be screening at the Straight-Jacket Guerrilla Film Festival
How did you get into making films?
Since I was a young boy I loved watching Hollywood movies, I could tryout their character
styles but I failed all the time making me a bad actor, I felt connected to the film world, I wanted
to do something undone by other directors in my country .The passion for movies and the
presence of passionate people around who hard different skills needed in film production, I had
to drop from IT class on my last year, then I joined YouTube film makers classes every day and I
felt this is what I wanted in life, that what made me feel that am breathing again I learnt skills in
2 years i.e. script writing, screenplay writing/ editing, film directing and acting, these made the
idea of starting producing movies very strong and producing the first movie was inevitable. We
started with the short movie titled I CRY IN PAIN at a budget of 50USD and another one titled
HOMELESS FET at a budget of 100USD, the two short movies taught us a lot of lessons about
the film industry and movie production as a whole. The challenges we faced, the successes, made
as strong and optimistic about our journey in the movie industry. And now in this year of 2019
we have managed to produce our first featured movie titled 25TH BEST AND GREAT DATE at
a budget of 500USD since 2015 when we entered into this film industry.
What inspired you to make your movie?
What I can say is that am self-Draven person, the dream, the fire which was burning inside
me, inspired me to get a paper and a pen to write something on it, [2]of course just like others the
absence of good quality movies in our country; seeing most of the movie producers in the
country producing half-baked and poor quality movies, we didn’t have a second thought on
starting to produce movies that can reach the international standards which can help our movie
industry in Uganda to glow. We may be a little bit far away from this dream, but we are hopeful
that one day, which is not far from now, we shall make it happen.
How has your style evolved?
We have been able to create our own dolly machines we use in our movie productions, just by
our self and we use common materials to design them.
They are made out of scrap, but on the standard. Our movies are now in the festivals, not only
that, we have now five featured movies with scripts in our store ready to be produced, and one
TV series about the history of the greatest kingdom in our country.
Tell us any strange or funny stories while making the film?
Ha-ha……., during the production of this featured movie 25th BEST & GREAT DATE!, since
we were not paying the casts and other production team, the director could go and cook food for
the cast and crew, and there after comes back to direct the set, I can’t forget when the leading
cast was hungry at the very time of shooting his scene, but the food wasn’t ready!! So whatever
he was acting didn’t come out very so we had to stop the shooting until the food is ready, this
made the scene to be shoot the following day..
The Misrule film movement & Pink8 manifesto bring what to mind?
What I can say is that any attempt to break the rules of film making is a good thing, so misrule
film movement & Pink8 manifesto bring what to mind the hope to an extent, the reality of
rewriting cinema`s language through the artists of the underground. I love the idea of going
against, going against the grain what film school teaches and creating instead, with low budget, a
cast of unknowns. In my country I haven`t got a director I admire about the adhered to these
kinds of ideas in the past.
What can we expect from your next film?
In the next film, it’s going to be very big, because the lessons we learnt from this one, we are
going to apply them in the next movie to make it better than the previous one. Also expect new
material, entertaining and action which is going to make it great. We have resourced more talent
from the communities both crew and casts. So don’t miss out! I`m not sure how much more
shooting that I will do before I decide that the project is complete, but there are a couple other
locations that I’d like to capture before closing the door on the coming movie.