Makerere’s cinema class goes practical

Jun 18, 2006

<br>THE recent graduation at Makerere University saw a special group of graduates off to a virgin field. A pioneer cinema class left the hill with high hopes of a juicy field. <br>

By Tony Mushoborozi

THE recent graduation at Makerere University saw a special group of graduates off to a virgin field. A pioneer cinema class left the hill with high hopes of a juicy field.

“I feel like I am a 1968 graduate where jobs were always available after graduation. The sky seems to be the limit,” an optimistic Morris Mugisha said on graduation day.

“Cinema class was introduced for students who major in literature and we began with the third year students 2004 – 2005,” the cinema lecturer, Sister Dominic Dipio, says.

Cinema was introduced by the Faculty of Arts through the literature department in October 2004.

For one to qualify, they must have passed literature at A’ level with a minimum of a grade B in addition to pursuing it at Makerere.

However, it takes more than being a literature student to do cinema though.
“You have to be a good literature student and with exceptional interest,” the lecturer stressed.

The course involves critiquing classic films especially by African film makers like Ousmane Sembene, one of the first film makers in Africa from Senegal, Haile Gerima of Ethiopia and other notable pan Africans.

“The films make a remarkable impact on the students who seem to wake from a kind of stupor. They realise that they have been missing out on many untold African stories,” the lecturer says.

One of Sembene’s film attacks donor aid and sheds more light on why some Africans and Europeans cannot let donor aid stop flowing to Africa.

Another film Sarraunia is about a central African queen that totally waves off colonialists from her kingdom with the collaboration of enemy kingdoms.

A huge number of screenplays written by the students address the political problems of Africa, rather than the relationship problems that we see in the popular African cinema.

“We are just helping out on anything that needs a hand. It is a kind of enjoyable internship,” Justin, a major actor in the project says.

Talking about a low budget remains one of the underlying problems. The class is largely theoretical because it has only one camera and just a video system. The class also needs a computer.

“They definitely need support. They need cameras to shoot their amateur projects and they have to get those camera’s from somewhere,” Sister Dominic says.
It is a core course so students of cinema have to hand in a full feature screenplay, like a dissertation of sorts, at the end of the course.

Few Hollywood films like Citizen Cane produced in the forties is rated the best movie ever.

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