I did not want to rant, but as I researched crowdfunding options for my next feature film, Big Tree, it pissed me off to discover that all major platforms, including kickstarter, backerkit, and indiegogo, allow creators only from certain countries to set up campaigns. Yet, anyone anywhere can give them money? Funny. I’m considering crowdfunding as an alternative to traditional film finance, for I’m struggling to get the attention of film gatekeepers. With the system set up against fledgling artists like me, it is devastating to learn the policies of the platforms. Sure, there are many platforms based in the continent that I could theoretically use, like m-changa, but they are not made for artists. They favor teary causes and businesses, making it difficult to convince a backer to divert their money from a cancer patient or from a pads-for-schoolgirls project to a film production. Hence why I’m keen on platforms built for art, where backers want to give to films, books, and music.
Crowdfunding, especially through patreon, has enabled me get this far in film. I got into it 2017 because I create science fiction and it is very challenging to make photo-realistic visual effects. Patreon is not for one-off projects. It’s more about people who care about my work supporting me long term, pledging money each time I finish a film, and this enabled me to work on several short films as target practice. I have evolved from basic VFX like this to the remarkable effects in Little Red Eve, which is as close as I can get to Hollywood-level VFX. If you have a dollar to spare, please I still need your support, through patreon or ko-fi, or via paypal, to get me where I’m going, and that destination is a feature film. It will be really difficult to fund it entirely through patreon or ko-fi as my initial budget is over five hundred thousand dollars. This sum will come down a great deal once I start rolling cameras, but I can dream of raising it through kickstarter, or backerkit, or indiegogo. Sadly, I can’t create campaigns in these platforms. Why? If patreon can allow creators from my part of the world to set up campaigns, why can’t they? Could it be a hungover from colonial polices, where capital flows only in one direction?
That hungover policy is evident in international film spaces, which I’ve struggled to get into because they insist the director and the producer cannot be the same person. The producer is the person to whom they hand over the money, and the director works under this person, or something along those lines. Often, the producer is based in Europe. This policy ignores the fact that the greatest African filmmakers, like Sembene and Gerima, produced their own films because they could not get money the traditional way. Today, a vast majority of African filmmakers have to produce their own films if they want to get anywhere. Some gatekeepers are responding to the times. I see some projects presented at Durban FilmMart have the director and producer as the same person, yet in the past they did not allow this. Locarno allows filmmakers to apply as both director and producer if they have a registered company. Good signs, but still, a vast majority enforce this policy, frustratingly.
There’s a grant I got recently, and they blindly pushed for this policy, insisting I can’t be my own producer. They wanted me to hand over the project to another person, or another company. They are an organisation also based within Africa, but their money came from a European institution, and I could see why they blindly, and ridiculously, enforced this policy. My company, Dilstories, operational since 2011, is one of the most successful film production companies in Uganda. I even built what passes for a studio with a soundstage. Yet this grant insisted I can’t use it to get the money, that someone else had to sign on the contract, and control the money. We had a long and bridge-burning fight about it. Ironically, the grant’s catch phrase had ‘decolonizing’ in the way they did things.
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These moneybags can’t see the unique way each artist works, and their insistence on an artist working under a producer could be considered ableist. In the film spaces, there is a strong emphasis on networking. When you go to film festivals or other events that foster networking, there’s pressure to meet people and form bonds that lead to co-productions. The informal slogan is ‘they don’t take on projects, they take on people.’ In simpler terms, a co-producer won’t come into Big Tree because of the project, but because of who is behind it. I know, this simplifies it too much, but that’s the general sense. So what happens when you are somewhere in the autism spectrum and can’t easily connect with other people?
When starting out as a filmmaker, I made What Happened in Room 13, at Maisha, a film training lab in Kampala. It was the second time that, as an adult, I was amidst strangers for more than two weeks. The first time had been the year before, still at a Maisha event but at that time I was only a screenwriter and could keep much to myself. This time, I came as a writer-director and I could not avoid people. For two weeks. At the end, I stood in front of a crowd to present the film, but I trembled so much that I could not talk. Mira Nair, the founder of the training, suggested I get off the stage…. I think I went back an hour later with two other directors, so I wasn’t alone, nor the centre of attention. Only then did I control my nerves. Later, someone asked me, ‘Have you seen the trash people make and call films? But you have made a masterpiece, so why are you afraid of people?’
One big problem with finding producers to work with is that I love science fiction, which requires a lot of visual effects, and most producers are hesitant to touch such projects. When I first pitched Big Tree at Durban FilmMart in 2023, every gatekeeper said the same thing: ‘…..but the butterflies!’ (The film uses genetically modified butterflies as a plot point.) So I strived and made a proof of concept, Little Red Eve, and I pitched it to a few people at the European Film Market in Berlin, earlier this year. One person responded, “We will need up to five hundred thousand for VFX alone, yet the budget will be around one point five million.” Meaning, they wouldn’t make any money if they took on the project.
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Many African filmmakers, of course, do not rely on the system and focus on productions that target a specific audience within the continent. Examples include those who work within Nollywood. As social media explodes in the continent, ad-supported video-on-demand streaming platforms have given many audiovisual artists a way to get paid for their work. I too make content specifically for the Ugandan audience, and these are especially TV series and content for YouTube. But with Big Tree, and much of my science fiction projects, I have global ambitions, so I have to think about aesthetics and production values that appeal to people far outside Africa.
And I want everyone to see this film because the theme has become urgent. When I started developing the idea in 2018, I thought dictatorship would only apply to Africa and the global South, but with the unmasking of the USA and with the far right returning to Europe, well, we, the ordinary people, have to imagine ways in which we can effectively control state power. Big Tree imagines a future where a young woman invents a technology to foster direct democracy, enabling thousands of people to be joint-presidents and every citizen to be a parliamentarian. Already, there are experiments with direct democracy, like vTaiwan, so it’s not far fetched to imagine such a near future. If you’d like to follow updates on Big Tree, please sign up for my newsletter, or follow me on mastodon.
Click below to watch it for free, on PeerTube.
I’ll end with a note on why I’ve gained more success in writing than in film, and it is mostly because the book world destroyed walls that prohibited disadvantaged writers from joining the party. Associations like SFWA and BSFA opened up to all kinds of writers. While big publishers still insist on agents, I can submit directly to publishers that matter, the pro and semi-pro SFF publishers. Though some have submission periods, which are a nuisance and a barrier, the vast majority are proactive in soliciting works from historically marginalized writers. And, a good majority are approachable. But film is still problematic. The systems set up at the height of colonialism still exist. As you hear a lot of noise about enabling African filmmakers to join the party, ask yourself why Netflix has its headquarters for Africa in Amsterdam, and not somewhere on the continent.
