Katine, Uganda: Outdoor Movies Shown in a Make-Shift Open Air Cinema in Katine, Uganda

Photo Credit: The Guardian. Dusk was already falling as we - a team of Guardian and Amref staff - pulled up to the Apalamio trading centre in the Ojom parish of Katine. It was still busy with people buying vegetables, bartering for goods and mending bikes. With us we had four films, a large bundle of wires and leads, a laptop, projector and screen and blind hope everything would come together on the night. Our idea was simple. Bring the Guardian's films about Katine back home: outdoor movies in rural Uganda. Our vision of creating an open-air cinema in the middle of a Ugandan village finally became reality last week when we screened to an audience of hundreds four of the films shot by Sara Nason for GuardianFilms about aspects of life in Katine. Things weren't perfect. The only speakers we had were ones that could fit in a suitcase, which left parts of the crowd straining to hear what was being said. The power supply was erratic. A crisis over a fused plug was averted by an enterprising local who simply screwed live wires into our plug-board with two small sticks, and when we finally got a picture, it was at times obscured by the slow procession of a colossal bug inching slowly across the screen. But the roars of laughter from the crowd, the calls of approval of women during Nason's short documentary about the perils of childbirth in Katine and the well-wishes of locals after the films had played ensured that this outdoor movie screening will be just the first of many. Two nights later we showed the same films to an even larger crowd on the site of an old IDP camp in Tiriri, this time with hired speakers and the screen rigged up to one of our vehicles. Over the coming months Amref plans to hold more open-air screenings of Katine films, and, hopefully, some of those shot by villagers, following training conducted last week, at different locations throughout the sub-county. Source: "Four films and blind hope" by Annie Kelly -The Guardian. Read full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/katine/2009/mar/06/cinema-screening-report.

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