Forum of Independents - Competition 2008 / Divizionz / Uganda, South Africa, United Kingdom, Luxembourg 2008
Four friends, one ambition, four ideas about how to make it happen. The Ugandan creative team YES! THAT’S US calls their work guerrilla filmmaking, and it certainly holds its own in terms of style and content with City of God, which takes place in the slums of Rio de Janeiro.
Four young friends from four parts of Uganda try to make it in the capital city of Kampala, where they have set out to start careers as musicians. The unwritten rules of the city’s “divizionz”, however, can lead unwitting guests down dead-end roads. The protagonists are suddenly confronted by hitherto unknown conflicts in which their relationships with one another vie for the upper hand with the phantoms of personal success. The film is one of those that conveys the audience to exotic places without taking advantage of the setting to conjure up the atmosphere. The key factor in this is the authenticity with which the slums are portrayed and the use of local non-actors. The film does not need guns to evoke drama – the threat to the protagonists’ plan is dramatic enough. The film shows slums consumed by infighting, the roots of which lie not in the established hierarchy (as we know from films set in the Rio de Janeiro favelas), but in sheer human rivalry.
89 min / Color, DIGIBETA
Director YES! THAT'S US
/ Screenplay Donald Mugisha, James Tayler
/ Dir. of Photography James Tayler
/ Music Roadblock, Chillum Woods Sound, Benon Mugumbya
/ Editor Donald Mugisha, James Tyler
/ Producer Donald Mugisha, James Tayler
/ Production YES! THAT’S US
/ Cast Kyagulanyi “Bobi Wine” Ssentamu, Mark “Buchaman” Bugembe, Catherine “Scarlet” Nakyanzi, Olem “Lot” Bonny
/ Contact WIDE, YES! THAT'S US
www: divizionz.yesthatsus.co.ug
Yes! That’s Us is a group of Ugandan filmmakers linked to the production company Deddac, which was co-founded by Donald Mugisha. The team came together in 2002 and unites creative talents who were previously making short films and music videos for East African musicians. The film 610 (2005) which, like Divizionz, was written by Donald Mugisha and directed by the Yes! That’s Us collective, won the main prize at the Kampala film festival. The first audiences to see Divizionz, which Mugisha co-wrote with South African documentary filmmaker James Tayler, were the residents of the five Kampala neighbourhoods, for whom the filmmakers held free screenings. The film was later shown in the Forum section of the Berlin IFF.
WIDE
17 rue Cadet, 75009, Paris
France
Phone: +33 153 950 464
E-mail: [email protected]
YES! THAT'S US
Plot 1100 Banda-Kyambogo, , Kampala
Uganda
Phone: +256 782 188 101
E-mail: [email protected]
Loic Magneron
Distributor, Sales Agent
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