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".
Nabwana's love for films began long
before he was allowed to watch any - his
older brother Kizito would return from
the local cinema hall and describe what
he'd seen in vivid detail. "I remember the
gestures he used… there was a guy who
used to crush people, so I liked that," says
Nabwana. "Even now I see them in my
head."
At senior school, Nabwana decided he
would make his own action movies one
day. "I had that art in me, I wanted to
make a movie - I had to fulfil that dream,"
he says.
But there was not enough money for him
to even finish school. "So I started making
bricks and digging sand to sell to people
around here," he says.
Finally, in 2006, at the age of 32,
Nabwana had saved up enough to pay for
the first month of a six-month course in
computer maintenance. "That was enough
to know how to assemble a computer," he
says. He then taught himself how to use
editing packages such as Premiere Pro and
After Effects, and borrowed a camera
from a neighbour. "And with that I
started… I did not know how to write a
script. But then I thought of these drama
actors, how do they do it? And I started
figuring it out."
Tebaatusasula was one of his earliest
successes - the name translates loosely as
"They never paid us."
It mixes comedy, action and witchcraft -
one character bewitches a man who has
stolen his wife. "In Tebaatusasula things
jumped out of the house... chairs, the TVs
and everything, and people loved that very
much," says Nabwana.
But his biggest challenge was yet to come.
Unable to find a distributor, Nabwana
came up with an ingenious solution: the
actors and crew work for nothing, but get
to keep half the profits from any DVDs
they sell. "We do man-to-man, door-to-
door all over the country to sell them," he
says. The films can sell for up to 3,000
shillings - about $1 - but the team only has
a window of about a week before they are
pirated. They sometimes wear full
costume to maximise sales.
It was on such a sales trip that they had
bumped into Hofmanis.
As soon as they met, Nabwana agreed to
write a role for Hofmanis, who felt like he
was 10 years old again. "When I was a
child, I would go through my father's
closet, find two belts of his, tie them
together, and now I'm Indiana Jones. And
the trees are Nazis. That's what this is," he
says.
So, two days after arriving in Uganda, he
found himself filming a fight scene. It
didn't quite go to plan. "I grab someone in
the scene and we fall into the raw sewage
and we start fighting there." He says
everyone was amazed to see an American
rolling around in sewage. "That in some
ways was my baptism here. Only people
who are from the slums behave this way -
because they grow up with sewage it
doesn't mean much to them." They
honoured him with a Ugandan name:
Ssali.
Sewage plays a part in all of Nabwana's
movies. He purposely includes such
details because he wants to reflect his
surroundings - his films are from the
slums, by the slum. It's part of their
appeal. "What I've found out… is that
people want to see what they live in. They
want their life to be put on DVD. They
like it very much," he says.
But he admits that this puts off
distributors, whom he has accused of
"trying to copy exactly what is done in the
West and exactly what is done in
Bollywood and Hollywood".
"I'm going to show the world the kind of
life we enjoy or we grew up in," Nabwana
said in an interview for the 2012
documentary Wakaliwood. "It's called
a ghetto life but you know it's good… and
it's hostile."
After that first trip in December 2011,
Hofmanis visited six more times. Then in
March 2014, the 45-year-old sold his
possessions and moved to Wakaliga.
"Back in New York I got rid of everything.
I had put my stuff in storage but I couldn't
even afford the $22 (£14) per month it
cost," he says. "I'm all in."
"He's now part of my family," says
Nabwana, 42, who lives with his wife
Harriet and three children. Hofmanis
moved in next door.
They have big plans for the studio. A
Kickstarter fundraising project launched
in March exceeded all expectations. "All
we asked for was $160 (£105) to make a
movie, but we got $13,000 (£8,500)," says
Hofmanis.
They immediately went on a shopping
spree, buying toy cars and trucks to blow
up - the trick is to match them to what
Bissaso can find in the local scrap yards,
so they can be used for stunts.
The team spend a lot of time discussing
weapons. Nabwana now plans to build a
full-scale helicopter from scrap. He has a
fondness for choppers, and remembers
being chased by one during the civil war
when he was about 12 years old. His
brother's cinematic knowledge kicked in
and they tried to outrun it - the helicopter
followed. He chuckles at the memory.
Wakaliwood currently has six films in
production, including Bad Black, a kind of
reverse Karate Kid, starring the children
of Wakaliga. And they are inviting fans
from around the world to submit scenes
for "the world's first crowd-sourced action
film" - called Tebaatusasula: EBOLA.
Hofmanis describes life in Wakaliwood as
a "lazy country afternoon punctuated by
the unpredictable". As one of the few
white men around, he's in demand as an
actor. He has played Jesus in a chart-
topping music video. For another role he
had to crawl into a fresh goat's carcass "so
when the cannibals plunge a knife into my
chest they're pulling out the goat's
intestines and not my own."
But on his personal blog - Mud, Blood &
Wooden Guns - he hints at darker
moments. He has lost 55 lbs (25kg) in
weight since he arrived 15 months ago. In
October last year he compared his
situation to the 70s cult thriller, Sorcerer:
"I wound up in a third world country with
no way to get home… It does not end
well."
He has swapped a comfortable Western
existence for life in a slum - without
running water or plumbing, no sewage
system and with barely any electricity.
"People can be confused that they see us
with internet - a 3G modem that I brought
here - and making movies, so the default
is it cannot be a slum," says Hofmanis.
"But that's the whole point. Wakaliwood
should not be able to do what it does. But
it's happening.
"The story is still being written. This is
just the beginning, or the Beginning of the
Beginning, as Isaac says."
But in the end, it may be Hofmanis' story
that attracts Hollywood's attention.
www.josiahdele.blogspot.com
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".
Nabwana's love for films began long
before he was allowed to watch any - his
older brother Kizito would return from
the local cinema hall and describe what
he'd seen in vivid detail. "I remember the
gestures he used… there was a guy who
used to crush people, so I liked that," says
Nabwana. "Even now I see them in my
head."
At senior school, Nabwana decided he
would make his own action movies one
day. "I had that art in me, I wanted to
make a movie - I had to fulfil that dream,"
he says.
But there was not enough money for him
to even finish school. "So I started making
bricks and digging sand to sell to people
around here," he says.
Finally, in 2006, at the age of 32,
Nabwana had saved up enough to pay for
the first month of a six-month course in
computer maintenance. "That was enough
to know how to assemble a computer," he
says. He then taught himself how to use
editing packages such as Premiere Pro and
After Effects, and borrowed a camera
from a neighbour. "And with that I
started… I did not know how to write a
script. But then I thought of these drama
actors, how do they do it? And I started
figuring it out."
Tebaatusasula was one of his earliest
successes - the name translates loosely as
"They never paid us."
It mixes comedy, action and witchcraft -
one character bewitches a man who has
stolen his wife. "In Tebaatusasula things
jumped out of the house... chairs, the TVs
and everything, and people loved that very
much," says Nabwana.
But his biggest challenge was yet to come.
Unable to find a distributor, Nabwana
came up with an ingenious solution: the
actors and crew work for nothing, but get
to keep half the profits from any DVDs
they sell. "We do man-to-man, door-to-
door all over the country to sell them," he
says. The films can sell for up to 3,000
shillings - about $1 - but the team only has
a window of about a week before they are
pirated. They sometimes wear full
costume to maximise sales.
It was on such a sales trip that they had
bumped into Hofmanis.
As soon as they met, Nabwana agreed to
write a role for Hofmanis, who felt like he
was 10 years old again. "When I was a
child, I would go through my father's
closet, find two belts of his, tie them
together, and now I'm Indiana Jones. And
the trees are Nazis. That's what this is," he
says.
So, two days after arriving in Uganda, he
found himself filming a fight scene. It
didn't quite go to plan. "I grab someone in
the scene and we fall into the raw sewage
and we start fighting there." He says
everyone was amazed to see an American
rolling around in sewage. "That in some
ways was my baptism here. Only people
who are from the slums behave this way -
because they grow up with sewage it
doesn't mean much to them." They
honoured him with a Ugandan name:
Ssali.
Sewage plays a part in all of Nabwana's
movies. He purposely includes such
details because he wants to reflect his
surroundings - his films are from the
slums, by the slum. It's part of their
appeal. "What I've found out… is that
people want to see what they live in. They
want their life to be put on DVD. They
like it very much," he says.
But he admits that this puts off
distributors, whom he has accused of
"trying to copy exactly what is done in the
West and exactly what is done in
Bollywood and Hollywood".
"I'm going to show the world the kind of
life we enjoy or we grew up in," Nabwana
said in an interview for the 2012
documentary Wakaliwood. "It's called
a ghetto life but you know it's good… and
it's hostile."
After that first trip in December 2011,
Hofmanis visited six more times. Then in
March 2014, the 45-year-old sold his
possessions and moved to Wakaliga.
"Back in New York I got rid of everything.
I had put my stuff in storage but I couldn't
even afford the $22 (£14) per month it
cost," he says. "I'm all in."
"He's now part of my family," says
Nabwana, 42, who lives with his wife
Harriet and three children. Hofmanis
moved in next door.
They have big plans for the studio. A
Kickstarter fundraising project launched
in March exceeded all expectations. "All
we asked for was $160 (£105) to make a
movie, but we got $13,000 (£8,500)," says
Hofmanis.
They immediately went on a shopping
spree, buying toy cars and trucks to blow
up - the trick is to match them to what
Bissaso can find in the local scrap yards,
so they can be used for stunts.
The team spend a lot of time discussing
weapons. Nabwana now plans to build a
full-scale helicopter from scrap. He has a
fondness for choppers, and remembers
being chased by one during the civil war
when he was about 12 years old. His
brother's cinematic knowledge kicked in
and they tried to outrun it - the helicopter
followed. He chuckles at the memory.
Wakaliwood currently has six films in
production, including Bad Black, a kind of
reverse Karate Kid, starring the children
of Wakaliga. And they are inviting fans
from around the world to submit scenes
for "the world's first crowd-sourced action
film" - called Tebaatusasula: EBOLA.
Hofmanis describes life in Wakaliwood as
a "lazy country afternoon punctuated by
the unpredictable". As one of the few
white men around, he's in demand as an
actor. He has played Jesus in a chart-
topping music video. For another role he
had to crawl into a fresh goat's carcass "so
when the cannibals plunge a knife into my
chest they're pulling out the goat's
intestines and not my own."
But on his personal blog - Mud, Blood &
Wooden Guns - he hints at darker
moments. He has lost 55 lbs (25kg) in
weight since he arrived 15 months ago. In
October last year he compared his
situation to the 70s cult thriller, Sorcerer:
"I wound up in a third world country with
no way to get home… It does not end
well."
He has swapped a comfortable Western
existence for life in a slum - without
running water or plumbing, no sewage
system and with barely any electricity.
"People can be confused that they see us
with internet - a 3G modem that I brought
here - and making movies, so the default
is it cannot be a slum," says Hofmanis.
"But that's the whole point. Wakaliwood
should not be able to do what it does. But
it's happening.
"The story is still being written. This is
just the beginning, or the Beginning of the
Beginning, as Isaac says."
But in the end, it may be Hofmanis' story
that attracts Hollywood's attention.
www.josiahdele.blogspot.com
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