Wakaliwood Forever: A Conversation with Alan Hofmanis

Wakaliwood might be the most significant underground film production company you’ve never heard of. The group hailing from Uganda has produced some of the most exciting action films of the past decade, and they’ve done it for less than a new pair of Nike Air Force Ones (these shoes cost about $100 dollars USD if you’re unfamiliar). A village banded together through the power of cinema and getting the damn thing done. Within that village lives a man named Alan Hofmanis. Once an outsider to Wakaliwood and Uganda, he was able to finagle his way into this band of merry filmmakers all from a 60-second trailer and a whole lot of intrigue. 

Blake Williams: Okay, we're recording.

Alan Hofmanis: That whole end sequence [in Who Killed Captain Alex?], that whole final battle was done, Isaac [Nabwana, director of WKCA?] tells me in about two hours. And it was done illegally because that was like some state park that they sneaked into and they could never get permits or anything. So, the way he did it was he got all the actors together, and basically said, we don't know what's going to happen, meaning if this film will ever come out. If anyone's ever going to watch it, if I'm ever going to make another movie, all of this stuff. So the instructions he gave was everyone has to come up with like three or four ideas, all the actors. And like, do what do you want to. Do you want to throw a grenade? Do you want to swing on that vine you see a couple times, like, do you want to die? Do you want to shoot, kill, whatever it is, let's have you guys make a mental list of what you want. And we'll shoot it. And that whole sequence was built in the editing, you know, because it wasn't organized beforehand or had like a dramatic arc. It was just complete and that [scene is] all built afterwards, which to me is frickin’ brilliant. You know, I think he's a genius.

If we were to sit together and point to things… But there's so many, like with the simple grenade shot, you know, when a guy throws a grenade, and we fall into this little creek. When [Isaac] flips it, he flips the x axis twice. You know, it goes from like, [the guy] is throwing it this way, then he flips the axis here and then flips it back. And there are film critics who made their career talking about oh, he broke the rules of cinema. He crossed the axis like doing simple things like that, where you have this guy in a village in Uganda, who has never, of course, seen any of those movies, he's not inspired by any of that stuff. He's just using his instincts. And it's like, how do I make this cooler? Like, yeah, he had that idea. It's a simple idea. Flipping it. It's so easy just to overlook, because it's just fun and silly, but it's bonkers. And if you look at like the camera angles… There's a big final battle in one of these movies in Afghanistan and it has the same exact quality of the end of Captain Alex battle, in that it's complete chaos. And in a western movie, when they do a war scene, you understand what's happening if you look at, say, the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, for instance. This is typical of any movie, it's like you have the goal, right? This is what we have to do, we have to break through this line. And then we have to get the pipe in here to set up the detonators to blow up whatever this ridge and we can have access, like you have clear and defined goals. Isaac has seen real war, and the guys in Afghanistan have seen real war. And they both say the same thing. They say when you're in a frickin’ gunfight, it's complete frickin’ chaos. There's no like…like when you see an American war film, it's like they're under fire, and they’re huddled down and saying, okay, you two gotta get the left flank, and you get the right flank, and we'll go… Yeah, it’s none of that. It's just fucking mayhem. Until the bullets start to slow down. And you're not even sure who's winning. You don't know.

And Isaac saw this in the Ugandan Civil War. He was a child. He was [in it] up until about eight years old. But he's seen the real shit. You know? I have all this written down and it's not really public or anything yet, but it's like, he's seen stuff. So this would be early 1980s, and you would have just guerrilla soldiers, like everyday people who are now soldiers, grab a rocket launcher, quote, “Schwarzenegger shoot” a missile for no frickin’ reason. And [they’d] blow up someone's head, it hits their neck and the head tumbles like 20 feet up and falls, and they're quoting Schwarzenegger. So, Isaac is maybe eight years old, nine years old, and he's seeing this shit. And that's one thing, but it's just complete chaos, like it comes out of left field, and you don't know what the hell the motivation is for half the things. And so [that’s] one thing he keys in on a little bit. And this is the same thing that I've spoken with military people that I've met, friends of friends, is that, for some reason, when you're under fire, it's funny. And people laugh. And it's, it's maybe just a reflex from the stress from from this, but there's actually a humor to it. And it can be very perverse and whatever, but it's just a reaction. You know, you're under fire, and you shoot and you kill someone, you're laughing. And Isaac saw that, too. And it's in there, it's in the matrix of it, where there is like a perverse humor, but Isaac flips it instead of making it.

Like what Isaac has said sometimes is one of the big problems in the beginning, and why I moved there, was the idea of the violence. And in the beginning, I thought it'd be easier if I'm based in New York City. Because I know people. I was a festival program director for a number of years, and I've worked in distribution and theatrical and I thought it'd be easier from here to help promote. And people were horrified, friends of mine and colleagues, were horrified that I'm trying to promote Captain Alex, and disgusted with me and repulsed by me. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And they say, well, because I am promoting the idea of violence in Africa. And so Alan, why are you here promoting Africans killing each other? And you know, when you put it that way, it sounds pretty bad. But then, you know, you go to Isaac, and Isaac is fucking furious, because he's like, “I'm in Africa? Who the fuck am I supposed to kill, a bunch of Polish people? I'll happily kill them, or Italians, or I don't care. But I am in Africa. So I kill Africans. Okay. And like, why can't I make them and they're comedies and so why can’t I make an action film? Yeah, it's just like, where is this list of who made this?” And he would say to me, “Alan, I want you to bring me the person who made this list of countries not allowed to make action films. Okay, because I see America can do it. France can even do it. Even Thailand and Japan. Why can't I in Uganda make an action film?”

So it was this idea of violence and violence in Africa. And I would also really confuse Isaac because he doesn't consider his films violent. Because he says they're more comedies, and the reason he doesn't [consider them violent] is because he has seen the real shit, he’s seen the real thing. And he says something that, like another famous filmmaker would have said 50 years ago, but you know, he's never read the guy's biography. He doesn't know, right? It's just these ideas come up. And one of them is from Sam Fuller. You know, he's the real thing. He was a Marine. He was in World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. So, I'm a big fan of Sam Fuller's work, and one thing Sam Fuller would say is that because he has been a Marine and in three fucking wars dude, this guy, and he said that if you've seen real violence, if you've seen it in war and what it does to flesh, what it does to people… You cannot put it on a screen. There is something in you that prevents exposing other people to that harm. You can do, like, the consequences of the violence, or what led up to the violence, but the actual depiction, anyone who's actually been part of it in any way feels an obligation to protect others from that same harm. The only people who can show that are people who are ignorant. And that's someone like Steven Spielberg, because he's never been in war. So because he's ignorant of it, he's able to depict it. It's the same thing with Eli Roth, and like torture porn and Hostel because he's never been tortured. And he's never seen someone be tortured. So therefore, you can let your imagination go. But if you've actually seen it, there's something that stops you. And so this is where Isaac gets confused. I was working with just Americans as opposed to German or French, and they were saying that these films are violent and and Isaac was saying they're not. I know what violence is. Violence is when you're in the village, and the guerrillas come in, they point to your father, they bring him to the back of the house, and you never see him again. Like you hear two shots, and he's gone. That's violence, and what he also used to see, because all these people, they're really into witchcraft and shit at that time. And today, too, but at that time, if they see a pregnant woman, they take out a butcher knife and carve out the baby in front of everyone to make sure that baby is not is not the reincarnation of some general that was killed. That is what he saw. So he's like, “Alan, that is violence. And I will never, I will never do that. What I'm doing is comedy.” And that's also why he likes the helicopters to look silly. One, it's like the best they can do. But the other hand is, like, he knows how they look. And he knows the guns are fake, but he doesn't want to use real guns the way we do here. You look at whatever genre you know, whatever the fucking thing is, John Wick.

BW: John Wick’s a movie like that and I love it, where they go for the accuracy of this is how you build the gun, we're gonna show you taking it apart…

AH: Right, and how you reload it and how you handle it, the recoil? How it's a complete study of realism that way. Isaac purposely doesn't want that. He wants it to look fake. And also, it's fun if it's fake, but then he treats it real. That that's the fun part of it is that it's silly. But then the actors really believe it at the moment. And that's what he carried into the movie. And so it's interesting that way. But he was so confused by that. He said he was actually very worried for America, because he said America's problem with this idea of violence is that they’ve forgotten what violence really is. Because there hasn't been a war. I mean, it could be individual things, like we're seeing it with school shootings and stuff like that, but I mean, those are localized. Like, there hasn't been like a war since like the Civil War, where like, cities have burned down…

One of the big things that I was fighting here, when anyone saw the clips, because the film wasn’t fully translated, they would always love what they saw. People would get very excited, and then step back and go, “Well, it's Africans killing each other.” And it's like, that's all he's got.

And it's a cartoon, it's good guys and bad guys. And, you know, it’s child-like that way and not in a demeaning way. It's very simple, the metaphor was good versus bad. With the caveat. And this is the big caveat with what Hollywood is that everyone dies. It's not just like the bad guys, because he has that big problem with American movies. His big problem with American action films, is that Schwarzenegger never dies. That Chuck Norris never dies, that Bruce Lee, any of these people, they commit horrible violence, but nothing happens to them. And that disturbs him because, again, he knows you play with guns, you die by one. It's right. You know, the gun itself does not know who's good or bad. Right? You know. So typically what happens in his stuff is that everyone gets it. And it could be random. So that it’s a criticism for American stuff. And because he doesn't like the idea of children watching, like, Commando, for instance, and walking away that if you believe you're good, you can kill and get away with it. You know, if you're playing with guns, you're gonna get it. It’s gonna happen. Anyway, so I don't know where we got on that little topic.

BW:  No, I think that was a good way to just show the reality of what they're dealing with. Over here, like you said, we do just watch these hyper-violent things.

AH: So back to those [filmmaking] conditions, Isaac was probably not the first. There might have been a couple other filmmakers coming out of his area and his education. Again, try to process this, okay? He did not see his first film until his 20s. Okay, he did not start making films until his 30s. That is freaking late to begin filming when you're older than 30. Right? It's like unheard of. That’s some Van Gogh kind of shit.

BW: Right.

AH: Painting when you're 32. Every filmmaker starts when they're 15, for Christ's sakes. So he did not grow up watching movies, he grew up listening to the stories of movies. And what that means is, maybe the Civil War part is over, they come back to Kampala, and he's maybe like 14 years old. And I'll tell you what I think happened. This is me here. So there were actually two periods of violence in Uganda, in recent history. The first one, of course, everyone knows about the Idi Amin period. And people just disappeared, people were tortured, anybody that he thought might be against him. And the problem is, it's very tribal there. So it's like tribe against tribe. So you can be doing nothing, but because you're not a part of his group or whatever, it could happen to you. And, you know, he just went to prison and disappeared. Now, that was like more in the ‘70s. Now, when that was over, it was called Obote. And people know less about Obote. [Obote] was the president of Uganda, before and after Idi Amin. So Obote was the president early on, and Idi Amin was one of the generals and Idi threw him out. Then you have the Idi Amin period, after that, Obote came back. And this is now early 1980s. The people killed at that time is literally a 10 time magnitude, what we know from Idi Amin. Like the numbers are fucking hundreds of thousands are brutally murdered and all that kind of crap, he was an in a complete fucking revenge thing. And now it's the opposite tribes and shit, and so at that time, it started the Civil War. And what you had was Obote, which is now the government versus the guerrillas. Musevani is the president now. So the rebels won, in this case. So what you had in this civil war period, which is Obote versus Musevani, is when Isaac was a kid, and like six years old running from the violence and the way it worked there.

And so they're all in the villages just running. And then the military comes in. The military's like, “Okay, so you're supplying the rebels, aren't you?” And you're not, but but how are you gonna prove you're not? So to make a statement or whatever, the military comes in, kills your fathers, takes your food, all that. The second the military leaves, the rebels come in. "Hey, we saw you talking to the government. What did you tell them about us?" So they come in and murder everyone. Both sides are against you. And, you know, as a kid, the greatest fear is that you lose your parents. And so luckily, that generation was raised not by their parents, because everything was split up in in war, but by grandmothers, or aunties. In his case, it was the grandmother. And when the Civil War began, he had something like three or four brothers and sisters. When it ended, he had about 14. And that's because his grandmother would just adopt all these other children. And so when the Civil War period ended, they come back down to Kampala, it's just desolate and wrecked, you know, but it's, for the first time, relatively peaceful. And now the rebel leader was the president— who still is the president like 38 years later—to give you an idea. And his motto was, "Now you can sleep." Because the most dangerous time was in the night. No one can sleep at night. That's when attacks come. So that's his motto, you can now sleep. And so Isaac comes back. And he goes back to Wakaliga, which is where he still is to this day. And all those brothers and sisters he now has, they all grew up and have families, and that became the village. And then they became all the actors and whatnot. So it's like this extended family doing this.

And so at that time, now, we're talking like 1983 or '84. And I think in like two generations, Uganda was open to the west. And this was the exact time of Rambo and Schwarzenegger and Predator, and Commando, and all these frickin’ movies. So they're watching these things for the first time. And it'd be like on a 50th generation VHS tape, on some busted-out TV run on a generator or some car batteries. But they fall in love with it. And it's because one of the reasons is that they're cool movies. But, you know, with an action film, you don't need to know the language. Like you don't need to know English to understand Predator. Looking look at Predator, like tough guys in the jungle, kind of like Ugandans, fighting this thing. Yeah. Cool stuff. The movies, no one had TVs or anything like that, but there would be what's called the Video Hall. And it's like a movie theater and it'd be a dirt floor with these little benches and they would watch the movies like that. And so even though they didn't know the language, you know, they didn't need to know the language. But of course, they still want to know, like, what the hell is Schwarzenegger saying? And that would be a problem because how do you translate it? Because one, how do you technically add subtitles to like a 500th generation VHS? You know, that's number one. Number two, what language is it going to be? Because there's over like, 50 different dialects in Uganda alone. And then the third problem is illiteracy. Because that whole period, there isn’t any kids that were going to school. The schools are only just reopening after this whole period. So illiteracy was a huge problem.

So, someone had an idea, this is back in like '84. What if I get a microphone, and I sit in front of the screen and as the movies playing, I talk into the microphone and tell you what's going on. You know, and that worked. The problem was that they didn't know what was happening either and just made shit up. It became this comedy skit, and that was the birth of the VJ. It was just a schoolmate of Isaac's, believe it or not, but that's a whole that's another story. So that's what's happening is that Uganda is now flipping out over all the music, all the actors, all the movies, all that kind of stuff. But Isaac was not allowed to go watch the movies, because they were considered to be for like seedy people. That was the reputation, so his grandmother didn't let him go there. But his brother was a little older. He's one of the actors. He's the guy who does like the triple backflip in Bad Black off the ridge. That's his older brother. So he was like 15, so he would sneak into the video halls. And he would watch all these like Chuck Norris movies. And then he would come home and tell him "Oh Isaac, it sucks you missed it. Theres this guy, his name is Chuck Norris. He's huge, he's ripped, and he beats the crap out of people." And he would tell him the story of all these movies. So Isaac is growing up with with the image of what a movie is. And then the video halls,  I'm doing whatever I can to save these because they're all disappearing. But the video halls would have murals. Like in Ghana, in West Africa. They've gotten kind of famous for their paintings, like if you've seen them, like movie paintings. They do it on sacks of flour, or sugar or something like that, and they've gotten kind of famous for that. That's not what happened in Uganda. In Uganda it was murals. The difference was is that in Ghana, the movie theaters were portable, you would actually go to the bring it down to town, your little DVD, or VHS player. And so the posters needed to be packed up. In Uganda, they were permanent. So you would have giant murals like 14 foot of Schwarzenegger, of Rambo, of all these things. And it was freaking bonkers. And so many are destroyed. And I've been going around the country with a team of people and we buy entire walls to kind of protect these paintings.

And then, when Isaac was 20 or so, he started making bricks and started making little money. And he's like, I'm gonna save enough and I'm gonna buy a frickin’ VHS player. And I'm going to buy my own television because I want to see some of these movies. And he did, and he finally watched like, Chuck Norris. And he's like, "These movies fucking suck! Like, the action’s okay, but why is there so little of it? Why do I have to waste my time watching him eat breakfast, or get his car keys or drive to the office? I know he eats breakfast. Why do I have to see that?" And he's not wrong. He got so frustrated, he was like, “I'm going to show you how to make the movies.” Because he grew up with the ideas and his brother was a very good storyteller. He's so pissed off at other people's movies, and says I'm going to show you how to do a properly. That's what he's frickin’ doing. So there's so much going on in this. And understand this, there was a moment where they're like 14 years old, in like science class in a slum in Africa. And there's Isaac. Next to him is Richard the Tiger Mafia, the actor. Next to him is Bruce, they're all like 14. Next to him is the guy who invented what the VJ is. Emmie was later. This is like the original guy who invented that. Plus, plus his brother when he would see like, we're all in class together as kids. And now they're all frickin International, famous. action stars. Completely bonkers this whole story. You know, so then when you come here, and you’re like, "Well, what he really should do is make films about poverty." It's like, guys. I get it. But like, Jesus.

BW: it's literally a story of them taking absolutely nothing. He learned about movies almost like legends, how they will be passed down throughout time. And then you just see, like you said, you see the murals. And you're like, I have this idea. It's like, when you're a kid, your parents won't let you watch Rambo, right? Cuz it's too tough. You can't see that. And so you just kind of have this idea of like, what is like, what is this enigma that I can't view? Yeah. Yeah, that's so cool.

AH: It starts to grow, you know, grows in importance. You know? Because you can't see it. And then, when he finally does see it, it doesn't live up to his expectations. Because, of course, the imagination is better. And that's when he's like, "Fuck it all to hell." And then it wasn't until he was 30 or so it'd be 31. And it was the birth of his daughter. He had his first kid. And it's like, literally, I think the day she was born, he was like, "Fuck all of this, I'm making movies." That's when it started. It was because of the kid. And, that's it. And then how do you do it?

BW: That actually goes into one of my questions is that he didn't have the traditional film school education. And now learning that he really didn't have a formal education of anything. Like some people can watch movies and just kinda soak it up through osmosis, right? And some of the shots in these movies are fairly complex for someone who otherwise wouldn't know how to execute them, right? Like, you go to school, and they kind of tell you, well, you messed up here. Here's how you can do this. Did he just get it by trial and error? Or was it like, “Okay, well, I'm gonna figure this out.”

AH: It's completely trial and error. But also what he does is he studies his audience to see what works, what doesn't work, but that's complete trial and error. And for me, it's the editing, you know, like he's doing like he's putting these shots one after the other. It's just, it should not work.

BW: Yeah. Well, that was another one of my questions was that the editing in Who Killed Captain Alex? is very straightforward, right? Like, it makes sense. You're watching it. It's a visual language that makes sense from someone who doesn't necessarily know how to put these things together visually, right? Or didn't know prior to? Is he still editing on… The rumor is he went out to a scrap yard and put a computer together and then in the vice documentary, you can see this monolith, it looks like the computer that they used to send people to the moon. Has he made his setup more efficient at this point? Or is he still operating on that setup? 

AH: No, not at all. I mean, that whole period, that was the first thing he did when he started to take it seriously, is that he got some books on computer repair, because he knew everything's going to be based on the computers. So from those couple of books, he learns how to build a computer. And so those were the very early days, but now it's very different. Money comes in, so everything now is laptops, and really decent ones. And it's laptops because the power situation is still not perfect. And because it's one thing if you have a laptop and you lose power, you have at least some battery life to save the files for Christ's sake. Before it was… Imagine you're editing and shooting and editing for a while and then the power cuts out and corrupts the whole drive. So no, the system is very different now like that. But with the editing software. He's completely self taught, but I mean is when he got like a bootleg copy of Adobe Premiere. Because it has to be PC,  Premiere, it was like version 1.1 whatever. He did not have internet. So he did not have even YouTube tutorials on how to do this shit. He had to go through every single button. Every single thing. Okay, this is cut. Okay, what is this? Okay, this is paste. There's no one to ask. He had to completely figure out everything, piece by piece, you know? And then basic editing and then basic sound editing. And then how do you get a helicopter? How do you do sound? And at first what he would do was sample movies. Like a machine gun sound, he’d sample it from the movie Commando. That's where he'd get it from. 

BW: If he was unable to download a movie, would he have to take a microphone to record that like old crunchy VHS to get that sound?

AH: That or try to replicate it. And sometimes he would try to replicate by smashing stuff or whatever. But yeah, you have to create the whole sound library. And then he got ahold of one at some point, somehow. And he was really happy with that. I've heard this from a number of filmmakers that are in other parts of Africa where they had a problem with sound and a problem with sound libraries. Because think of a motorcycle. You can have a filmmaker in Uganda who has money and when they download a sound library of motorcycle sounds, they all sound like motorcycles from America. It sounds very different because the motorcycles there are a piece of shit two-cylinder, an 880-whatever CC, and so it doesn't match and they can't use it. Like there's no sounds of the village or the way people talk in the background of a room, or a car, or a door slam. Any of these things are not the sounds that you hear every day in these parts of the world and so that's something that I want to do, to create a database of sounds. One of the things I really want to do, but this takes a team, is to create some kind of sound database of these parts of the world. And I'm talking door slamming and car engines and a motorcycle passing by. Something that would be open source. It's a completely different quality to it. These are things that frustrate them. 

BW: So what would be the way that you could see doing that? Just going through with a microphone and recording these sounds? You said that Wakaliwood has an influx of money now, at this moment, so are you all using top of the line sound equipment for the next production? Which I think at this moment is "Who Killed Captain Alex 2?"

AH: Yeah, it's up to Isaac. We can do anything, but he has to decide what he wants to do.

BW: So at this moment, I think the budget on Alex is up in the air. I've seen $200. I've seen people say that the movie was made for $145,000. How much was that made for? How much is one of these movies typically made for?

AH: So we're talking in that period, like the golden age, the Golden Age is before there were public in the West, and just after, right? Bad Black and Alex, all these things. So I was telling the world at that time, that Alex was a $200 film. And I lied, it was not a $200 film. It was an $80 film. I but I didn't want to say $80, because somehow $200 sounds believable. I don't know why. It is true that I had to pick a number. And I'm like, lets just say 200 dollars. And also, I didn't want to exaggerate. I thought it was $80, we discussed $80 when we added up stuff. But I didn't want to say $80 and it turns out to be a lot more. So I was like, Okay, let's just say $200. And sure enough, it was $80. A lot of the money was spent on things like in the bar scene, he broke a couple chairs. And then he had to pay for those and it was half the budget. It was an accident. But it was stuff like that, and the rest would be like throwing people in a van to bring them to that one location with the battle. And that's it. And as far as the costumes, like all the military stuff, that was all the actors, you know, so the actors are responsible for their costumes. And that's a funny story with Bad Black. Because Isaac had a really hard time finding someone to play the lead actress. And we have lots of female actresses, and none of them wanted to do it. And I didn't understand why because I'm like, "Look, it's a good role, man. You’re beautiful, you're a killer, and you're the title character, and you seduce the American and then you get out of prison." But no actress wanted to do it, because they know they're responsible for the character's wardrobe, and hair, and they suddenly told me "Look, she’s supposed to be a successful gangster which means she has to have nice clothing. I'm not paying for that. I can't afford that." And then just the hair alone because they know she will have a different hairstyle in every scene. Because that's what you would do if you're a female gangster, you gotta look hot as shit.

BW: They’d be switching it up. 

AH: You have to, you have to have swagger as they say that. And so they couldn't do it. And then there was this one actress we knew who came in, and it turns out that she was a hairdresser. So that's how it worked out. All her friends would help her with the hair and nails and the makeup and the costumes. And so she got the part and she was great. She nailed it, you know. But no one knows these stories. They're not public. But that's that.

BW: Wow. So that's incredible. $80. And you said that sometimes those things get stretched apart. So like the cameras getting the things to film, like the tape for the cameras and the computer parts that's all stretched across? So for $80? Are these movies typically being made for like, less than $100?

AH: I mean, I think I think the budget for Bad Black is more like $60.

BW: Okay. And a lot of that is just incidental costs were like, Yeah, we broke something, or we have to pay for gas for transportation. So really, once you boil it past those things, the movies aren't being made for… If I had to guess I'd say no more than like, $30.

AH: Well, that's and that's also like, because they're built from the ground up. You know, like, it's like you like, Okay, I live here, this is the main location, right? You know, this, that, I had my buddies, and they're not doing anything so they're in it. It's like that. It's like you build from what you know you have. But the trick is with that, you can make movies that way. But the problem is, the challenge is, is that usually takes more time. Right? You know, and that's the thing with Hollywood, if you have money, you can make a film pretty fucking quick.

BW: You can expedite any process. 

AH: Right. You can rip through it. And you see that when they make like these $200 million films in eight months. But if you have no money, you can still do something. But it's typically, you know, like anyone's first movie really? Shot over weekends, right? For eight months. And you figure out like, usually, that's when most movies are like a family reunion in a house upstate. That's what you have. That's also one of the reasons I went to Uganda to find him in the first place, because you just look at the trailer for Captain Alex. And they have no money, dude, you can look at this, and you know it. But like, in the West, if you have no money, you shoot a family reunion, you shoot like a relationship breaking up, right? Two people in a room. You don't make a war. I think there’s 150 people… I mean, count how many different faces are in that trailer alone. You don't do that. And so that was very curious to me. Because what that told me, you know, there's that there's someone yelling at people here, right? Like to have so many give us some of the charge. If someone is organizing all these people's schedules, and all these locations, on the one hand, it's clear there's no money, but the other hand, there’s this huge organization. It didn't make sense.

BW: Well, none of it seems like it's thrown together haphazardly, either. Like you said, there is someone running the show, and everything comes out the way that he wants you to see it.

AH: That's it. When he's shooting, it's not like he will need to do multiple takes. The actors are very trained, and they're trained for Isaac's style. And Isaac's style is almost like a silent comedy. Like, it's very big. You know, it's almost like theatrical, everyone dies big and everyone talks big, you know, it's a certain style of his. So everyone knows it. And they act accordingly. But that said, there's no electricity or any of this kind of stuff, so like the battery in the camera is important, so you don't want to do multiple takes, but he does do multiple takes. If he's not happy, he'll say keep going. Isaac will stay until he gets it right. But usually it's a first or second take, because everyone knows what he wants, you know?

BW: So was that something that had to be earned? Or was he just very clear from get go on the first movie? And since he typically does seem to work with the same people. Did they know initially? Or was it just from years of working with him and being like, “Okay, I know exactly what he wants. I'm gonna give him what he wants. We're gonna move on.”

AH: I'd say this. I had a really cool conversation with you know, Fab Five Freddy. There's the fucking legends, right? So a friend of mine said, "Hey, I'm in New York," and he said,  “Hey, Fab Five wants to sit down and have lunch with you.” And I'm like "Huh? I can't really dance. What? What do you mean he wants to meet with me?" It's like, Nah, dude. He likes what he saw. And he just wants you around, and he just wants to talk to you. So we had lunch, like years ago, and he fucking went nuts over this, like, he fucking loves it, the whole thing. And he would tell me the stories and, and I didn’t know much about music at that time, what he was like or his background. But what he was explaining to me was that when he was uptown, in the beginning of hip hop and all that, it was just two blocks. It was like the street he lived on and the street over there. And they were doing it for 12 years or something. And one would have a song. And the other ones would be like, “Oh, that sounds pretty sick, it's dope, but you can do something better,” and then they will do something better. And now Fab Five is like, fuck that shit. I gotta do something better than that. So they would just keep trying to one up each other, this rivalry, but they're all friends, you know. And they were doing it for like 12 years, and then it broke up. So what happened was, to the world, it looked like this incredible instantaneous happening. But the reality was, it was about 12 years of work with all the same people. And they all knew each other. And so when it took off, they were in this position to keep going and building and such because they had this huge team together.

He was explaining that that's not music anymore. The way the music industry works now is that if there's someone who has any kind of remote, little bit of talent, they get scooped up. Whether it's on YouTube that they're discovered, and they can do one thing pretty well, they instantly had management, they instantly have this, they do their thing. It works, it doesn't work, it burns out, it's over. He was explaining that there is no time anymore to nurture talent, and to nurture creative relationships, the way there was say in the ‘70s because everything is so quick now. And that's what he got off on with Wakaliwood because he saw that, and it's true. These guys before. Like, we think Alex is like their 32nd feature film. They literally work together for a decade. So, in answer to your question, yeah.

They get the style and get everything.  They all do get it, but then they all live together. And they're all friends for all this time. So they eat together, they sleep together, they watch movies together. It's like dancers dancing together. He just thinks it's the most amazing thing and that you're not gonna see that because it’s very rare. And, it's true. You have to go to these places where like the internet hasn’t penetrated yet. Where you don't have that kind of instant fame. You have to work on it together. You know, and it was the same situation. Isaac is doing things for the village the way that Fab Five was doing his own thing, you know? They had their fans, but they all knew the fans by name. It's it's an incredible thing, and I think what's happening with someone like Isaac, I think he's in an extremely unique position on the planet. And I may be wrong. But what I think is happening is there's never been someone from Uganda, or someone from that position, as in this Third World country, who has become pop. Yeah, it's not academic, but it's entertainment. And even Gandhi was a fucking lawyer. You know, he was educated in England, right? Like, like, you know, Bob Marley, his father was American, right? And he had this connection. This is off the grid kind of shit.  It's wild, it's bonkers. And it's all through entertainment. And it goes back to me in the beginning, where I said, I wanted to treat this as if he's from Brooklyn. Like, it's not a charity. This isn't a 501(c)(3), it's not socio-economic, whatever. It's making action films. They're action films. That's it. It's genre. And of course it's Uganda. But we don't lead with that, we lead with fun.

BW: Yeah, it's it's like you said. It’s entertainment. I mean, even opening the movie with the production logo that shows you them taking over New York, right? And it's such a bold statement, in my opinion, that they that they're like, we're coming, you aren't expecting us. But we're coming, we're taking over. What was the idea behind that?

AH: That logo was extremely thought out. And we sat down with that for a while, because what I felt we needed was something that shows the fun of it. And then we said, “Okay, we have this idea that wherever we go, we're gonna destroy it.” We're gonna destroy things. And then it became a problem, but the problem was because New York had 9/11, it's not like we can destroy the Statue of Liberty. We can't destroy the Brooklyn Bridge because then it's kind of a terrorist thing. It can take you out of the fun. So then Isaac said, "Well, what do people eat there? Are there restaurants?" and I'm like "hell yeah there’s restaurants." I used to live on Ludlow Street and Katz's Deli is in the corner of Ludlow and Halston. That's the street I lived on. That's what's happening in the shop is that that's a photograph of where I used to live, and I could blow that shit up. We had him blow it up and then we recorded how he did it. And so we made that, but that was very, very conscious in that we wanted to see exactly how the things are made without telling you how they're made. How funny it is and that it’s just these guys goofing around and we’ve got the camera guys hanging from a rope. But that's exactly how they shot it. You know? And that was it. It was just like we wanted the logo to be a window into this whole thing but also into the human.

BW: I love when he says commandos aren't afraid to jump and then the movie begins. 

AH: It's like that. They did the best they could and it'll be good at the end and it is! Even that title card for Captain Alex when it says that this was made in 2010 and no one ever expected it to go anywhere. The sounds that you hear is from my little room there. I opened my door and put the microphone outside, and that's what you're hearing. The kids playing, you hear some goats, some birds. That's the sound that I would hear as I'm like, typing that opening statement. 

BW: It's so serene compared to the balls-to-the-wall, all-out action movie, right? And it's just like a moment of silence. And then we get into it. 

AH: And it's also making it clear that it’s a family business with families making it. With kids everywhere. That's what happened to me. When I went on my first trip, and I didn't go there to work with him per se, because I didn't know. I went there more to see what the hell this was. But one of the one of the things I saw was when they showed me how they were shooting some scenes, wherever they would go in the village, there'd be like, 30 kids following them. Little kids. And as the scene is happening, and it’s a kung fu fight scene, right? If you turn around, the kids are doing the same exact moves. Like they're watching the actors, and they're mimicking. Yeah, because these are the real-life heroes of the village. Because to the kids, they don't know, they're actors. Right? The kids think they're really Commandos who save people. What I saw was, all these kids who are essentially growing up on a backlot, and growing up in a film studio. And so I thought to myself, these kids that are like 5,6,7 years old, in 10 years, you know, they're 18. They could be making [films of] their own.

BW: Does Isaac feel some sort of like, obligation, knowing the power of what he's doing? And what Wakaliwood and everyone involved is doing? Is there any pressure on him to have to get this right? Or is it like, well, I'll get it right, when I get it right? 

AH: I think the answer changes. You know, you know, for the for the beginning, when I started working, it was like, “I don't care. You know, I'm gonna do what I want to do. I don't care.” That was different then, because people all over the world, if nothing else, just send him text messages. In order to buy the movie, you have to call the number and they deliver it like pizza. You can do this at any time and his phone is always ringing. It’s guys from Finland or wherever, who themselves don't speak English well. They go like "Captain Alex?! Captain Alex?!" And he gives me the phone. And I say, "Yes, this is Captain Alex." But, I think the basic thing is that back in 2010 or 2011, the idea that in a Third World slum without electricity he could be making films that will be talked about around the world and enjoyed, genuinely enjoyed, you know, and people will be quoting… To say that in 2010, It's fucking impossible. It's impossible. The films aren't even made in English, you know? Like, it's impossible. But we did it. The next step of making a million dollar film or doing this or that and the rest, that's just difficult or unlikely. That's easy. But difficult is nothing anymore. We did the impossible.

So what I'm saying I guess is the stuff that was impossible is done. And I think part of it maybe, is relaxed, because of that. Even if we do nothing else, we kind of set the stage maybe for the next generation of filmmakers from these parts of the world. And I think there's truth in that. But at the same time, you know, he's got three kids, they're growing up. But I think that the door is open. I honestly think whatever he wants, I think he could have. He just may need help to do it. I can put a team together. But if you said, hey, look, I want Schwarzenegger and Van Damme and in the same movie where they both kill Jackie Chan. I can present that. There's ways to do it. And also the way I see it is that it's all steps, you know, like, small steps. 

BW: So you have a vision for what this is. You've set it up, it's clear, I can see it. I would love to see that movie, right? How is Isaac looking at that? Is he looking at it from the same lens?

AH: I don't think so. And that's the catch, I think he would like it. But at the same time, you know, the thing is that he's older. And I mean, he's younger than me, I guess I'm 52, and Isaac is maybe 48. But his life expectancy is 45, to give you an idea for his generation. So he's an elder. An elder in the village means you're almost like a judge in a trial. If a child stops going to school, the parents will bring the child to Isaac to talk to him. And if the husband and wife are arguing about money or whatever, they come to him. But this is also tribal. So he has a lot of demands from that part of his life as well. And he takes it very seriously. So it's not like Isaac is 22 years old. It’s not like we just signed a Hollywood contract, and we're Robert Rodriguez and we just did El Mariachi. So he is very happy with what he's accomplished. I don't know if he has the same hunger that maybe he did, say, 20 years ago. That said, he's not going to stop. But I know if he wanted to kill a bunch of action movies stars, he's ready to do it. But the future is up to him, you know? And if he's happy where he is, fuck yeah.

And then part of what I kind of want to do is I want to do some kind of Avengers situation, or like a James Bond movie or something. We need to bring in all the Kung Fu masters from Uganda, but also the ones from Peru with one village or Afghanistan over here, Siberia and India, all together in one movie to fight the bad guys. Something like that, I really want to do. Bring all of these guys together to do something crazy. And it could be like some bomb going off in Texas. Blows up half of Austin, but then an alarm goes off in this slum in Uganda. And its like "What the hell? We just lost commando base 325 in Texas. What's going on? You're Bruce U, and you gotta fly over there" He's like the James Bond character. He's got to save the world, but he's gonna team up with these guys from Ghana who are his mortal enemies, but we have to work together to solve this. They put together like an Avengers team from all these different places. I think that would be a picture! It's possible.

BW: That'd be incredible. I mean, I know in Nigeria, there's another camp of… I think there's probably an adult that works with them. But for the most part, I'm pretty sure they're kids called the Ikorodu Bois. They're mimicking Hollywood trailers and different things. But there are certain shots in those that I've reacted to the same way that I did the first time I saw Who Killed Captain Alex?, where I was like, how did they pull that off? Like, I think it was a trailer for Extraction, the Netflix movie, and there's a shot of like, a swamp or something in the trailer. And it was a puddle in their recreation. And I was like, how did they get that? And it took me a couple minutes before my brain started to work and said, they just shot a puddle to pull that off.

AH: Yeah, yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I don't know them personally, but I know what you're talking about. I've seen that stuff, and as you can imagine everyone's also sending it to us. And that’s my point. The doors are open now. The people are there. But now it’s a matter of organizing it. And it is a little tricky, because these are places that are far off. These guys aren't in the capital cities, they're usually in villages, right? And then you have language that shifts, and there's cultural differences. And it just takes time to get to trust people. You know, like when I show up somewhere, like Afghanistan, it's like it takes a little time. I'm like "Nah, I'm actually serious, man, I like what you're doing." But the door is open and the people are there too. If you bring Nigeria into this, I mean, the whole fucking country where those people are is just nuts for movies. And also it's things like that tribe in Northern Nigeria, where they specialize in comedies. They're doing their own movies that are different than the Nollywood kinds. Nollywood, I think is mostly dramas, and like witchcraft and things like that. But in the North, they're doing their physical shit. They're doing more Hong Kong-style Kung Fu. It's a tremendous amount of talent there. It's unreal. I guess now it's happening for music. The music is getting a foothold.

BW: Yeah, they're making a lot of pop music over there that's like number one on our Billboard charts.

AH: People are starting to starting to key in on that, but movies are trickier. It's easier to dance to something you don't even know the words to. But like film, it's not as easy to just pop in something where you know nothing. But it's possible. You just put them all in the movie together, and put the bad guys here. But I do think it should begin somewhere in, like, Texas, someplace that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Have a whole opening sequence like that. But they lose, the good guys lose, they take out half of the U.S. and now it's up to you know, Nigeria and Kenya and all these people.

BW: I would love to watch that.

AH: But that's what I mean, I can do that. Like I can actually do that because I think I know who they are. I know a lot of these people and I can do whatever he likes. But that’s the question, is what am I doing? Are we doing more movies with Isaac in Hollywood specifically or more international stuff? It's gonna be a little loose right now because its the holidays, but once the New Year kicks in, we're gonna iron this all out. I think Isaac works better when we're much more independent. That's Wakaliwood. And I think what I'm talking about with these co-productions will be like Wakaliworld. And it'll be international co-productions, maybe with Isaac, like as a co-producer, co-writer, basically whatever he wants to do. I want like Ugandan Shaolin monks fly in F15 tomcats out of volcanoes on the way to save a Peruvian village. That's what I want to see.

BW: Yeah, that's what I want to see, too. Big scale. Just like a legitimate big scale. Because like, Captain Alex, Bad Black, they are large scale movies.

AH: With Who Killed Captain Alex?, there’s two miracles. The first miracle of the film is that they got it done. We're talking about lack of electricity, everything using real blood in Captain Alex, and that's what they thought Hollywood did so they had mouthfuls of cow blood that they're using. Anyway, the first miracles of the film is that it exists, that these guys completely independently made it, right? The second miracle is that it found an audience, you know? Like, how do you bring that to people around the world? The only time in the world that could happen was now because of the technology. You know, there's no films from the ‘70s or ‘60s out of Africa, by Africans really. Meaning an African who's who was not educated or backed by French finance, for example. Because of the technology, how do you get the cost for that? And then with the internet penetrating these places, it could never have happened any other time. It happened exactly at the moment when it was possible. The very moment these people got their hands on a shit camera and dial-up internet, it's like, you count to three, and the movies are there.

To me, my life is always the movies, but I have a degree in art history. And it's the same thing in painting. People talk about the Impressionist painters, the idea of painting outside. Normally, what people would do take their sketchpad, their charcoal, and they would draw out a landscape and then bring it to the studio and start to paint and it takes them a long time. They have to go back and forth like that. The impression is that they're outside in the field painting. Yeah, well, the only reason that exists is because the first time in like the 1870s they had paint come in tubes. They came in a fucking tube. Before then you have to grind your own minerals. You need to mix it with the oil you need. So you need a studio situation because then it dries up. It's gone. So yeah, Impressionism, the second that technology was available and you can actually get paint and bring it with you? It's fucking portable? It blew people's mind. It's how it was born. So its the same thing, this is all digital. It's very interesting, the second they're technically able to do something, it's done.

BW: Earlier, you said that they had upgraded to laptops now. Have the cameras moved on? Like I know that there's been a big movement for shooting on an iPhone. You can shoot on anything nowadays. Are they shooting on iPhones and trying to learn these different technologies and different types of cameras?

AH: Yeah, they have a lot of cameras. And I think they shoot in 4K now even which is kind of just kind of silly because, I mean, we still just do DVDs and YouTube and things. It's not even really HD, more early HD. But now these guys get all that shit, whatever he wants.  Isaac likes using now really proper and big cameras because it shows other filmmakers what that they can do. But you know, Isaac was hated in his own country forever, still is really. Not in the slums, meaning not from his audience. But film is traditionally at least a middle-class art form, if not upper-class. And that's because it's fucking expensive. And I'll tell you that action is the most expensive genre because you can't fake it like science-fiction. Sounds expensive, but, you know, "I am from the future." Okay, I believe it's fiction. But action, you need the costumes, you need the props, you need the Kung Fu guys, you need the car chases, you need the explosions, you need the helicopters. Yu have to see it on screen. You can't fake it, meaning you could do it digitally, but you have to see something on the screen, it can't be off-screen.

So anyway, the other filmmakers in Uganda, the majority of them were upper-class. And they are horrified that Uganda has become known for Captain Alex. So, you know, so they take offense and they're very public about it. They go on newspapers, and they rip Isaac apart, they go on talk shows, everything. And they say that he is a very poor example of what Uganda is capable of cinematically. And Isaac's response is, "I said Wakaliwood, this is what I do. If you want Uganda to be known for something better, or different, whatever you say, where are those movies? Make them. I'm not, I'm not stopping the worlds from anything. I'm doing it. I'm from Uganda, it's Ugandan cinema. Where are your movies?" So then what they do is they come after me was because you know, you have this American helping and why doesn't he help us? And I'm like, okay, maybe that's a good question. But can I see your films, and maybe I can help, but they don't show them or share it. It's a lot of jealousy. They would say shit, like in the beginning, and this was very funny to me, Isaac was on a TV show, and something someone said, "You know, you're telling the world you're telling everyone that Who Killed Captain Alex? is Uganda's first action film, when I know for a fact it was not. I saw a movie from Uganda that had a bank robbery, and then a car chase, and a big guy died." And Isaac said, "Oh, yeah, I know that movie. I made that movie. And you're right, in that there's an action sequence. But it's not an action movie, because the rest of that film was talking because I still did not know how to do explosions. And this and that. And an action movie is a movie that you go to see the action. And you need to have karate and Kung Fu and commandos and bullets and so you need to have all those things to be an action movie. So you're right. That's an action sequence but I wasn't quite ready yet. It wasn't totally 1,000% action, therefore it's not an action movie." That was fucking great. I was like "duuuuude!"

BW: Right? But it's such an interesting take that they shouldn't be known for this. When like, it’s kind of the story of film, right? Someone wanted to do something. He has the perfect story. He didn't know how to do it, so he just went and figured it out. And look at him.

AH: That's it. Because no one would help and everyone said he couldn't. People told him, “You can't do it, because there's never been a movie from Uganda that's big” or whatever." They told him the same thing. You know, but it's also that people can be very jealous, you know, and also, the problem there is there's a lot of thinking, the word they use is, “omuliro,” which is fire. And Isaac is stealing the fire from other filmmakers, meaning because people are talking about Captain Alex, they will never talk about any other film from Uganda. We stole their fire. And that is not the case at all. I think, if anything, it’s the opposite, like we will open the door. And I would love nothing more than for another Ugandan filmmaker to step in but they do like a love story. It's gonna be hard to do an action film and upstage, I think, but you can definitely upstage for a love story, or a drama, or a period piece, or something like that. I think that would be amazing. Because I'm so hungry for it. I keep trying to find it. Because if I can find that, and you want to work together, suddenly Uganda will be like in three dimensions. Because right now it’s true. It's known for films with toy guns, you know. If it also has something very highbrow, that's actually really good. If you enjoy a movie, you're gonna watch another and if you like something from Uganda, maybe there's someone else from Uganda you’ll like. You know, it just makes you hungry for others. It's not like people choose between watching Schwarzenegger or Rambo. They watch both. You know? So I try to explain that Isaac is not taking anything. In fact, he just opened the door. Really, if there's a different narrative of film coming out of Uganda, that's very easy to promote, you know, very easy, because you do it in opposition of Issac. Just stylistically with whatever. 

BW: Yeah, no, I mean, that all sounds incredible. Like, I want to see more. And it's a detriment to film that we don't have more, right? 

AH: So film in these parts of the world. You know, and all of them, whether it's Afghanistan and other places, it's really ephemeral. Even with Isaac, Isaac was making movies, and then the second movie was done, he erases the hard drive. Because he had to erase it because he needed that hard drive space. But also, he figured that people in the village already saw the movie, so let's just delete it. Because he's not thinking forward. That’s still the thinking in a lot of places, that this movie is done and you sell a little bit, then fuck it, erase it.  So I've been, I think it's about 2000. I could get the exact number, because they’re all in Ugandan, over the years, I’ve been buying and archiving East African cinema. I have over 2,400 movies from this part of the world on DVD, two copies each, and they're all backed up, I ripped all of them. I'm trying to build an archive, a living contemporary archive of African cinema, but it also should be extended the south of Mexico. Mexico, I heard is doing crazy shit around the village, with all this drug money making action films. These films are just pumped out and then they're lost. 

BW: ​​Does that tie into Wakaliworld? 

AH: Yeah, it's gonna be branch of it. The goal is almost to create like an IMDB but like an EMDB, like an emerging Movie Database. And it's something not so much a distribution, although it could be. It's more like, let me just archive it. These are the movies, this is the title, this is the running time, these are directors and actors, it exists and it's archived. Doing it for over like 2000 movies. And I tell you, I'm the only one in the world with a good number of those because they just disappear. It's just horrible. And then I know someone in Cameroon, another one in Senegal and it's the same thing there. These people are pumping out films. And then you try to find it two weeks later, it's gone. And I'm like begging these guys like, "I'll send you 50 bucks when I can. Buy them, save them." Because, you know, Africa is changing so quickly. It's growing so fast, that these films are, if nothing else, a window into this time, just like how people live because there's no sets. I mean, it seems like they're all shot on location with a local dialect or all this and that. Even if the movie sucks, there's something in it.