new york city
work hollywood
my stories come from my life we go
through
i've done over 40 movies the last 28
years
there are so many stories in uganda
which are virgin no one has ever
done them
when i was also in primary school i used
to like chinese kung fu
very much when i was going to school i
used to pass to
a cinema hall called africana i always
stopped there
to see chuck norris and i thought of
making a kung fu
movie so i'm trying to combine
uh uganda caricature western culture and
the chinese culture
in my movies holy see yeah
okay
it's cool it's fine because i enjoy what
they do
other guy was born a ghetto because
that's the life which i passed through
getting something to eat is through a
struggle getting weird sleep sometimes
sleep under channels
so it's easy for me to act like a bad
man
the guy who inspired me to act was uh
jen claude van damme
you know okay
this is uh our racing room
and we also use it for preparations
uh when we are doing an action or when
you are doing training like us today
the children now are going for their
morning session of
training this is how he looks when he's
training the children
it's always like uncle bernardo as he
acted in one of the movies
we call him bruce u grizzly of uganda
i used to watch the movie it was called
the
enter the dragon for bruce lee so i was
inspired because i liked that way i was
acting
so i also said i have to practice to
learn kung fu
and i try to do as he did
kung fu is good for those kids because
they also learn this plane
also the their bodies to be strong
self-defense as you know africa mean
they can defend themselves maybe and
even in acting here
they are our future here in our movie
industry
my name is alan hoffman i'm from new
york from new york city
i'm the first uh mizungu ugandan action
movie star
my background is in film in film
production and i was a film festival
director for a number of years
when i saw this 90 seconds of who killed
captain alex in a strange way i thought
it would be
crazy or not to come and be part of this
but what's happening here it's it's in a
lot of ways it's like the birth of
cinema if that makes any sense
there's no direct models there's no one
teaching them how to do anything
you have to invent everything as you go
and see what works or not
okay we're going to the studio
and this is a ramon studio
this side is my home and this side is
the studio
this is where i always sit
when i'm editing this is the computer
this is the duplicators i use to burn
but i used to assemble these now they're
not working
they have known powerful if it comes to
editing i edit one movie and it is
useless
we are going through the store where we
keep our equipment like the probes and
the guns and everything like the jeeps
and this is the guy behind
every equipment we make here this is for
tibet sassoon is supposed to be
yeah for launchers
and the big bullets can shoot you
this is a bullet
rambo
this gun a building here small engine
can start the trigger is
x-rated rotate here
uh this handle for motorcycle
this net for speaker
when the mr isa cannot finish to write
the
script say dauda i need
this gun for this part i can make it
myself
because i like
if it comes to the props and what it is
expensive somewhere and then we think
that we can do it
we try to make our own
previously we used to cow blood we could
go to the
up to where they slaughter cows and we
collect that blood and then
bring it and you could you know you know
drink it and
something like that but we got a problem
with that one of our actors
go thickness as when he went to hospital
then we had to
think of something else and then we came
out with an idea of photo color
okay okay action
though you might think it is violent
what i'm doing is sometimes more
than what was in the past because if i
could do it in the other way
it would be you know a different story
everyone would cry
immediately they hear anybody making
subversive activities
or try to plan anything against me they
reported that person straight to the
police
when i was a kid i could tell you that i
saw it i mean
after it i mean it was war you know
people could come at night and they tell
you
open the door you have to open and then
give them money if you don't have money
they could
take anything they want
they could come and you know take our
parents
away that was done by the the military
the police and everything and we have so
many parents who lost
their lives in that situation but what
i'm doing is
is just creativity is yes they are
violent but at least they can be even
seen by
children according to the way we answer
them
i've had conversations with oscar
nominated producers
wonder how i can sleep at night
promoting the idea of african violence
that stereotype to the world these are
people who say like if isaac is serious
about filmmaking
he should make films about poverty
because that's what people would want to
see
that's what he can do these people are
watching it
because it's africa you know they're
watching it because it's an action film
this is such an opportunity i think to
just like
this is more than one narrative in the
goddamn continent
okay now
i've never considered myself how much i
could take in filmmaking
for me it is passion i am passionate
about what i'm doing
if i want to do it right now i do it and
the actors i also want to do it
it's me who stops them they're always
saying let me do this let me do this
it's so that really gives me also
courage to keep on you know doing it
someone was in rwanda in the video hall
and so it is
hollywood from wakarika and said yes i'm
from there
he was so happy also to be movies are
coming from their own village
so i think that is a very big
achievement
to be known by the whole world
i don't think that i'll always be here
as the only director i don't
think that i always be here the only
editor i want others to come in
with their you know talents and then we
see that we
promote it i am sure that there are some
young children there who can even do it
better than me
and i feel like i want to work with them
to see that i do
really promote this work hollywood to be
the best
studio action studio in the whole world
cut
that's enough
foreign