Film

Bristol Bad Film Club: Who Killed Captain Alex? + Wakaliwood – The Documentary

Director
Nabwana Isaac Godfrey Geoffrey, Ben Barenholt
Certificate
TBA
Running Time
137 mins

Welcome to Wakaliwood – the world’s most DIY film studio. In the slums of Wakaliga around Kampala, a bunch of resourceful, self-taught filmmakers have churned out 52 feature films in the last ten years. Wakaliwood’s leading director is Nabwana Isaac Godfrey Geoffrey, whose penchant for kung fu action and gratuitous violence has led him to be dubbed ‘Uganda’s Tarantino’.

In tonight’s Bristol Bad Film Club extravaganza there’s a chance to see his $200-budgeted Who Killed Captain Alex? – Uganda’s first action flick, no less – which has been reviewed thusly: “Filmed in and around the director’s back yard, it tells the meandering, head-scratching story of some Army commandos fighting the Tiger Mafia in the slums of Kampala. Machetes swing, blood squibs are poorly popped, neighbours and cousins posing as stuntmen posing as actors jump and run around and shoot at each other in an orgy of exploding heads and rattling Kalashnikovs that would make Reagan-era Stallone weep with pride.”

The evening also includes the UK premiere of Ben Barenholtz’s Wakaliwood – The Documentary, which is described as a celebration of “the pure joy of creativity and reminds us that a dedicated team can overcome any obstacle when united by a common dream.”

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Heart-warmingly, all profits from this event go to the filmmakers of Wakaliwood, which should permit them to make another dozen or so features. Go here for tickets.

By robin askew, Monday, Jun 18 2018

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