Isaac Nabwana was a bricklayer with movies on his mind. But Uganda didn’t have the resources for Isaac’s dreams. By Isaac’s admission, his neighborhood, Wakaliga, is a ghetto, a small village littered with refuse and an open sewage channel running through town. Electricity is spotty. Money is a luxury. No matter: Isaac had enough creativity to overcome it all. Here he built Wakaliwood.
To say Isaac started with nothing is to undersell his origin story. After laying bricks all day, Isaac went home to write scripts — dozens of them. Then, they were eaten by termites. No matter; Isaac kept on keeping on. When he got his hands on a DV camera, he had to build his own computers from spare parts to edit the footage. But the heat in Wakaliga is oppressive, the dust constant. Hard drives failed, processors seized, data chips got lost. Nothing deterred Isaac, and he continued creating his special brand of action comedies, each populated with friends, family and neighbors. “I want people to laugh,” he tells the documentary crew following him. “If you’re watching my movie and you are sad, then I’ve done nothing.”
Directed by New York-based documentarian Cathryne Czubek, Once Upon a Time in Uganda is the story of Isaac and the man who helped bring Isaac’s movies to greater attention. That man is Alan Hofmanis, a movie lover, programmer and the protagonist in Once Upon a Time in Uganda. Alan estimates Isaac has made about 40 movies in 11 years, each costing about $200 and taking a month to complete. With no industry to utilize, Isaac and his wife distribute the movies by hand on DVD-Rs to surrounding villages. Isaac wishes they played in area theaters, but class barriers stand in his way. It bothers Isaac, sure, but not enough to discourage him. He just keeps making movies.
That spirit attracted Alan to Isaac and Czubek to their story. Alan saw a trailer for one of Isaac’s movies on YouTube and was impressed with the work and the high number of views. The world must know more about Isaac Nabwana, Alan surmised, and he dropped everything and relocated to Wakaliga. For a while, Alan and Isaac were the closest of partners, making Isaac’s special “beating up the white person” genre — extremely popular in Wakaliga and the surrounding villages. But then the world did discover Isaac, and a schism developed between the two.
Alan returned to New York but continued to spread the word. That makes Alan a good entry point into this story, but a frustrating protagonist. Alan is a soldier of cinema, no doubt about it. But when Czubek follows Alan back to New York and around the world promoting Isaac’s movies, it’s hard not to feel like Isaac is being pushed out of a story about him. Isaac seems to feel the same way. In early scenes, he is welcoming of Czubek’s camera. As Once Upon a Time enters the third act, Isaac seems more reserved, less gregarious.
It’s a disappointing shift because the first half of Once Upon a Time in Uganda is about as electric as any movie about filmmaking you’ll find. And the way Czubek weaves in bits and pieces about class struggle, social critique and the impetus behind Isaac’s hyper-violent and cartoonish style of action feels so smart, it’s a wonder why the documentary landed in a crowd-pleasing climax when it could have taken many different roads.
But maybe that’s not the point. Maybe the point is to do what Alan set out to do in the first place and show the world the wonder of Isaac Nabwana. And for that, Once Upon a Time in Uganda is a treat.
ON SCREEN: Once Upon a Time in Uganda. 8:30 p.m. Friday, July 21, Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder. Tickets here.
