[Stephanie] So often when we hear about a country in another part of the world from our own, we might only know a few things about that place.

And that boxes us in.

And it boxes in the culture and peoples of that country.

In France, maybe it's wine.

Mexico, cartels.

India, Bollywood.

And yet these places are so much more than a single element.

With Uganda, perhaps, it█s Idi Amin.

Maybe you saw “The Last King Of Scotland?” If you're really attuned to the news, you may even know about Dr. Milton Obote, who preceded and followed Amin.

Or Museveni, who's been in power for more than three decades after taking office in 1986.

That's the span of my entire life!

Maybe you even heard of the Kony Wars that outrageously went on and on and on into the 2000s.

But we're not really going to address these issues.

The history of modern-day Uganda is fascinating and worth further reflection.

It may even teach us something about our own times.

But we're here to dig deep into the life of a 33-year-old film director: born, raised, and proud to be East African.

Making waves in her community.

Poking the fire, and burning brightly as a filmmaker to watch.

♪ “Steadee█s Groove” ♪ Hi, I'm Stephanie.

I'm a 33-year-old American filmmaker, and a complete cinema nerd.

I love the oldies, the goodies, The New Waves, or Golden Age, you name it, I█m in.

On my 33rd birthday, I decided to travel the world to meet and document other filmmakers my age.

Travel with me to over 33 countries to meet the storytellers who are dynamically challenging the status quo of the world today.

Together, we will watch their films, hear their stories, engage with their cultures, and perhaps learn a little bit about life, love, cinema, history, and me!

[in Runyakitara] I used to think like a student, you know, of film or a student of theater.

And I'd be like, “Okay, what does this scene communicate?” But nowadays, I'm inspired by how much of my past, my history, you know, can come through a scene that isn't necessarily about me, but has things that are, that I relate to.

[Stephanie] 33-year-old Patience Nitumwesiga is a self-described “Afrofuturist.” A director, screenwriter, playwright, artist, educator, and feminist.

Truly a Renaissance woman, who finds the best medium to address the issues that face her and leads to intense creation.

She was born in 1988, in the mountains of Buhweju, in present day western Uganda.

As a child, she loved to read; and as an adult, she traveled East Africa doing community theater, while focusing on writing and directing.

Her pieces explore themes of the dichotomies between power, race, sexuality, politics, death, psychology, memory, and more.

She trained in Sweden and Denmark at the Prospero Performing Arts Center, and has a degree in Drama from Makerere University in Kampala.

She has attended Mira Nair's Maisha Film Lab for Screenwriting.

In addition to writing for Stage, TV, and Film, Patience is also a photographer and published poet.

As a filmmaker, Patience started her own production company, Shagika, focused on telling decolonized stories of Africans changing their worlds.

Tell me, how did you first like, when did you first know you wanted to become a filmmaker?

I was in theater school, so I was learning how to write and direct plays, and then we had one of these courses where we had Introduction to TV and Film, and I just loved it.

It didn't happen that soon.

I left school and I was like, “I don't know how this works.” It's, you know, Uganda is not a country that has like a well set industry.

So I just kept looking for places where, you know, films were happening.

I worked with a few people.

I worked with another Ugandan director called Irene Kulabako, who's, you know, a little bit different from Judith Adong, my teacher.

And it was cool to like, compare the two and see, “Okay, I can be this.” I can learn a few things from each of them.

And I slowly became myself, my own person.

Yeah.

[Stephanie] Dubbed the “Pearl of Africa” and “a fairy tale,” by Winston Churchill in 1908, this country in East Africa has a surprise around every turn.

With a population of around 49 million, Uganda is made up of traditional kingdoms, including, Buganda, Bunyoro, Toro, Busoga, and the now “abolished” Ankole.

There are said to be 56 tribes in Uganda.

But counting the kingdoms and tribes and defining their borders can be tricky, due to the colonial history and the “scramble for Africa,” when European explorers carved up the territory to divide amongst themselves; and everything in between that has tried to disrupt the order of things.

The largest tribe is Baganda.

It was favored by the British during colonial times, and in many ways dominates the narrative of how modern-day Uganda has evolved.

Despite this, there's so much under the surface of what Uganda was, is, and could be.

How do the filmmakers of Uganda access their true history and relate it back to a contemporary tale?

And now I call myself a Banyankole, which means that I come from the kingdom of Ankole.

But Ankole is post-1900.

I wonder what it's like for I don't even know how they called themselves like my great great grandparents.

And I had to start digging.

Not really that deliberately, but because my dad is like such an enthusiastic storyteller, he wants to tell you about his ancestors and and things like that.

And the naming culture.

He's named after one of his great great grandparents.

And sometimes it feels weird, like he does it, not because I'm a storyteller, but as if he's passing them onto me, and hoping that I will pass them on to someone, even if it's not a film, but that I have that knowledge with me.

[Poet in “Communion” clip] “Like a panic attack deep underwater, the body and its dreams are running out of time.” “Slowly.” “Slowly.” “Dying.” [Stephanie] Patience█s debut film is an avant garde, narrative short, “Communion.” Though very short, it packs a punch as a poet's eloquent expression of death, loss and memory.

[Patience] As someone who's gone through grief, and knowing how that communion with the dead comforts me...

I feel like I always need to bring it up so people know that in my culture, it's part of how we live.

The dead are never gone, and in some heaven waiting for us there.

They're there with us in our homes.

And you can speak to them and you can interact with them.

They may not respond like living people, but, we do believe that their presence is there.

[Stephanie] Entebbe, where Patience lives with her family, is 25 miles south of Uganda█s biggest city and capital, Kampala.

During colonial times, Entebbe was the capital.

And today, it is where many of Uganda█s foreign diplomats and expats live.

Located on the shores of Lake Victoria, it is the main entry point to Uganda, as it is the only international airport.

Patience and I took a stroll through the lovely Botanical Garden in Entebbe.

With its easily accessible tropical setting, rumor has it, that a part of the 1957 “Tarzan” film, a UK production which has Tarzan, quote, “On Safari”, was shot here in this garden.

The early days of cinema were dominated by foreign, mostly British filmmaking, though not much of that even occurred.

However, Hollywood dabbled in Uganda for a brief moment with the filming of “The African Queen,” which was shot on location around Murchison Falls in the west of Uganda.

“The African Queen” was directed by John Huston and starred Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart.

Set in German occupied East Africa during World War II, most of this classic film takes place on the river.

Uganda is considered to be the starting point of the White Nile, which flows from Lake Victoria to Lake Albert, on the border with the Congo.

Katharine Hepburn wrote a fascinating account of this film, shot in Uganda, in her book “The Making of the African Queen I took a boat trip along the Nile, to see where Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart had ventured and saw birdlife, hippos, and most remarkably, two different families of elephants playing together along the river banks.

Suddenly, I've become fascinated by the animal kingdom!

From the elusive Shoebill stork I tracked with Patience on Lake Victoria, to the graceful giraffes I fed.

The rhinos I visited in the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary, to the hippos, elephants and birds galore!

At over a thousand different species, Uganda has some of the largest numbers of recorded bird species in the world.

And with over 350 different species of mammals, East Afica has the highest concentration of mountain gorillas left in the world.

About half of the thousand gorillas remaining live in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, which borders Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This region is also home to the last remaining golden monkey population, along with a robust population of chimpanzees.

[Chimps calling to each other] I was instantly enamored by the chimpanzees I met in the Budongo Forest, one of East Africa's most ecologically diverse areas of contiguous rainforest.

“Budongo” means “fertile soil,” and in pre-colonial times, the King of Bunyoro would use it as a royal hunting ground.

A chimp named Jocco led me through the dense forests, teasing and taunting me along the way.

I liked Jocco.

Perhaps I'm so drawn to chimpanzees, because along with bonobos, they are our closest primate cousins.

Ancient, ancient ancestors.

And in them, I can see a little bit of you, and me.

Upon arriving in Uganda, I was invited to a private art exhibit Patience had in Kampala, titled, “Walking with Our Dead: Recapturing Pre-Colonial Joy and Power.” Part of this was a photography exhibit I was quite drawn to: “Unsung Heroes,” with portraits of rural women, who have typically been marginalized due to imposing Western standards and are doing important things in their communities.

Also on display were two embroidered quilts, one with multiple patches, and the other with an embroidered map of the Wakiso District of Kampala.

Patience calls this piece “The Femicide Quilt,” which was made in reaction to a string of rapes and murders that happened in her district.

The quilt was made in honor of each murdered woman, many of whom remain unknown.

Patience tried to find out as many names as possible, and had different people embroider a patch in honor of each one.

The third part of the exhibit was a film screening of three of Patience█s films: “Communion,” “Jangu,” and “Heaven Sounds Boring.” “Heaven Sounds Boring,” Patience█s short narrative from 2021, is exquisitely directed and acted.

This is a story of a loving father and curious daughter.

The daughter is terminally ill. She dreams about her grandmother's death, which leads to the child asking her father about the meaning of death.

Patience█s step-daughter, Nadia, gives us a real and heart wrenching performance.

[Patience] “Heaven Sounds Boring,” if you think about it, is about this concept of communion with the dead.

Spirits represented so much healing for my people before colonization, and like being in tune with them and communicating with them helped people get over stuff.

Not that it's easy to lose anyone.

No.

But I think there are ways that African society has found to to ease the transition, to help you know that you are not alone.

[Stephanie] During her exhibition, Patience also test screened an early cut of her short narrative film “Jangu” I had the pleasure of since seeing this film in its final form, and I love the visual style, colors, and mystic world she creates in this thought provoking piece.

Two young women walk home after a night out and stumble upon a witch, who grants them a wish.

They wish for a world without men.

At first it█s a blast, until they realize the unforeseen consequences.

Feminism is really about you self-identifying as you see yourself.

But I also love the idea of like feminism that isn't seen as feminism.

And my mother, for instance, never thought herself a feminist, but I think she's been like my biggest inspiration.

Even though I'm like, very close with my dad, I know that the leader of my home is my mom, because my mother has been strong.

She left her job very early on to like, do so many things to make sure we're fine.

She never let us starve.

I appreciate the fact that she knew that she was so strong that she had something she could give us, and she didn't sit on it.

She stood her ground and said, I have to do this for survival.

And that's why when I tell people like, for African women, feminism is not like a lifestyle or whatever, it's not an “In” thing that they do.

It's something that they live daily because they have to.

In your film work, what are some of the stories or themes that are really important for you to tell?

So Shagika is a word that means to like, uplift or rally behind an idea or a person and like launch them forward.

And the reason I think it's important to tell decolonized stories is because for a long time, the stories that are told about us, are told not by us.

A lot of times we look back on our past and we see a lot of shame.

There's a lot of shame in like, the African past, like the things that the British wrote about us are so despicable.

And that's why I also think I like futuristic stories, because, I feel like the future has been for a long time determined by the West.

And I feel like we abandoned a lot of African wisdom that could have led us to a better future.

So I feel like some of my stories are like to to re-dignify the history of my ancestors, or the legacy of my ancestors.

The cinema of Uganda is referred to as Ugawood.

There are some delightfully unique aspects of Ugandan cinema culture.

Most notably, the VJs.

Video jockeys are known as the subtitles of the community.

They translate the latest Hollywood blockbuster or Nigerian hit live on stage as the film screens to an audience.

Modern cinema making in Uganda is only a few decades old.

As in 1972, Idi Amin ruled that only films made in Uganda could be screened in Uganda█s cinemas.

He considered everything else to be, quote, “imperialist propaganda.” Cinema failed to thrive, and it was not until the early 2000s that cinema production really picked up again.

One of the most popular local filmmakers is Loukman Ali, who releases high quality short films on YouTube, including “16 Rounds” and “The Blind Date.” In 2021, Ali's feature film, “The Girl in the Yellow Jumper” became the first Ugandan movie to stream on Netflix.

In 2016, Disney released a film shot in Uganda, “Queen of Katwe,” directed by Mira Nair.

A biopic about Phiona Mutesi, a girl from the Katwe district of Kampala, who becomes a chess prodigy.

To me, Patience is an extremely courageous filmmaker.

I love that each of her pieces takes on a different genre, and aesthetic style, and they each have something to say.

Patience█s desire to seek a better society for her country, is especially evident in her feature documentary, The Woman Who Poked the Leopard.

This film follows the life and activism of opposition politician, Stella Nyanzi, a medical anthropologist and LGBTQ rights activist.

In 2019, Stella was imprisoned for 18 months for writing a dissident poem and offending the president.

After her release, she decided to run for Parliament.

One of the reasons I love that story so much is that if I ever created a character as phenomenal as Doctor Stella Nyanzi, all the development labs would be like, “but this woman is not fully African.” There's a, an expectation of what an African woman should be, and should look like, and how she should talk.

And I just love how bold and like shameless Stella is.

I feel like, if that story was told by a filmmaker, that's not from here, they would tell it differently.

And so I like the idea of, like, being there, part of that journey.

I don't see myself as an activist, but I see myself like a huge activist ally.

And to be able to document and preserve something like a phenomenal woman or man in the present, for the future generation to come and be like “she lived, she existed, she was here, and she was fierce.” Like, that's important to me.

[Stephanie] 217 miles north of Entebbe, in the north Acholi region, is the city of Gulu, with a population of approximately 150,000.

Gulu was the home base of the Lord's Resistance Army during the Kony Wars.

I went to Gulu specifically to visit the TAKS Art Center and to speak with its founder, artist and sculptor, David Lukani Odwar.

And he is the first Ugandan to attend the University of Wales Institute Cardiff, where he graduated with a degree in Ceramics.

When he returned to Uganda, David started the TAKS Center in 2005, converted from the British colonial clubhouse, and is now designed as a safe space for the community to explore the creative expression through the fine arts, dancing, music and more.

TAKS, or T-A-K-S, stands for “Through Art Keep Smiling.” Its quoted mission is: “Helping the people of northern Uganda change their lives after the war, in appreciation of the roles of art and culture, on the journey to forgiveness, self-acceptance, reconciliation, and physical, emotional and spiritual reconstruction.” My time in Gulu made me think of a compelling documentary film set in the Acholi region, “War Dance.” The film follows three kids, refugees from the Kony Civil War who are studying music at a refugee camp school.

They ultimately travel to Kampala for a music competition where, as refugees from the north, they're made to feel like outsiders, while having to process the emotions of the trauma they went through as child soldiers.

It's amazing how frank the kids are on camera, and it's heartfelt to see how the power of music can transform lives.

I took a road trip across Uganda from Entebbe to Kibale in the west, where I embarked on a five day walking safari.

Hiking up the 12 miles a day through local villages, to see the endangered golden monkeys in the Virunga volcanic mountain range.

And ultimately, into the Bwindi Impenetrable Rainforest.

to track the world's remaining mountain gorillas.

I walked from Mount Mahinga to Chameleon Hill through farmland, rural agricultural villages, the city of Kisoro, and onto Lake Butunda.

With the volcanoes hovering and the lake in the background, these pastoral settings were breathtakingly beautiful.

Many, many kids chased me, calling out enthusiastically “Mzungu!

Mzungu!” [foreigner / wanderer] I stopped at a family run coffee farm and embarked in a dugout canoe across the lake.

The next morning, I walked from Chameleon Hill to Bwindi, another ten miles through the mountains and tea fields, with kids herding goats and pigs to the Bwindi Gorilla Lodge.

Another highlight was being able to interact with the Batwa people, who were one of the oldest human populations that originate from our original hunter-gatherer ancestors.

They've lived semi-nomadically in the forest for thousands of years, until recently, when they got kicked out for conservation efforts.

The Batwa danced.

And we took Polaroids of all the villagers, who were still shaking the prints and grinning from ear to ear as I bid farewell.

[Batwa singing] On the way to Kibale, where the hike began, I stayed on Lake Bunyonyi, an idyllic landscape and one of the visual inspirations for Wakanda in “Black Panther.” The drive from Entebbe to Kibale, which was meant to take 6 to 7 hours, ended up taking 14.

Just 25 miles outside of Kampala, our vehicle got into a minor car accident.

A nice family stopped to help us and I chatted with sisters Sisi and Lucy, two of ten siblings traveling to their sister█s wedding in Kibale, the city next to Lake Bunyonyi.

They invited me to attend their sister's wedding.

They took me to their family home where they grew up and introduced me to the extended family.

I was sat at the head table during the ceremonies.

Ate buffet after buffet after buffet of delicious food.

And was announced to the crowd of hundreds as a member of their family clan, the Basigyi.

Technically speaking, this was an introduction ceremony rather than a wedding.

It's where the bride is introduced to the groom's family and given away in exchange for a bride price.

Historically, the bride price was paid in cows, but nowadays usually money is exchanged.

I was invited up with the bride's immediate family to participate in the formal ceremony to give away the bride.

I was honored to know these fine folks and be a part of such a special occasion.

[character in film] I'm Scottish, [Idi Amin character] Scottish?

Why didn't you say so?

I fought with the Scots against the Mau Mau Great soldiers.

Very brave.

And Good people.

Most people who know about Uganda, they'll reference “Last King of Scotland.” You see the African characters sort of like they're puppets.

They don't fully live.

They don't fully exist.

They don't have motivations.

They don't have, you know, you look at them and you can take them apart and see that nobody understood what was going on with them.

And there are stories that just need to be told from our own perspective.

Do you think that storytelling like that, and cinema, can have an impact, can change people?

I'm not as naive as I was to think that it does.

That it can change the world.

But I'm still very optimistic that my work gives them one extra signal.

You know, that push them to think harder about something and then reflect on it.

And maybe at some point they'll make a choice that█s, you know, influenced a little bit by that, but that I was part of that process.

What do you hope for your children's generations?

What do you hope for the future of Uganda, for your kids lives?

I hope my children will know and speak my language.

I hope my children will respect the different places that they've come from.

And one of my greatest hopes is that my kids will be so proud to come from the hills that I come from.

I want to, like, keep that alive so much that, you know, they won't forget.

So what does it mean to you to be a 33-year-old woman filmmaker here in Uganda?

I'm realizing, like, it's like my life is beginning now.

You know, I found the love of my life.

You know, I have a career, if I can say that.

I mean, it's just the beginning.

You know, it's been great to to discover things that are changing about myself, because I feel like, life just keeps finding me.

Yeah.

[Stephanie] What I loved about my time in Uganda, is how it stretched my thought process about history, ancestry, and storytelling.

Uganda is hard to define, because so much of the culture goes back to the days before they even was a Uganda.

I'm drawn to the fact that each kingdom has their own myths and stories.

Patience is drawn to the stories her father told her about their kingdom.

Not much has really been written down.

The histories have been orally passed for hundreds of years.

At a risk of the younger generation no longer knowing the stories, filmmakers like Patience are determined to keep their cultures alive through the films they make and the stories they tell.

To learn more about the Cinema Nomad filmmakers, and dive deeper into the exciting world of global cinema, visit our website: CinemaNomad.TV