War Dance Screening in Northern Uganda

This is the first installment in a series by Open Air Cinema Technician Jay Johnson. Jay is in Northern Uganda, where he joined the makers of the Academy Award-nominated documentary ‘War/Dance’ on their first return to the refugee camp where the film was shot. He is there to screen the documentary on an Open Air Cinema Elite System in the remote camp of Patongo.

We are traveling way too fast on a dirt road heading north. For safety, we’re grouped in a convoy of four Toyota Land Cruisers. I have been bouncing around in the back seat for over an hour — hundreds of potholes the size of kettle drums, plus over 74 speed bumps in the last mile alone.

Somewhere ahead is a truck full of equipment from the United States: a 25-foot inflatable movie screen, a mixing board, two DVD decks, and hundreds of feet of power cord. The projector I hold tightly on my lap, hoping my bones absorb any shock that might damage the fragile bulb.

About four weeks ago I happened upon the documentary ‘War/Dance’, about school children practicing for a dance competition in a refugee camp in Northern Uganda. One of the most powerful documentaries I had ever seen. I had no idea that in three weeks I would be sitting with those children in that camp watching it on an Open Air Cinema movie screen.

Our convoy finally reaches the camp. The sun is setting behind the fields, clouds rolling along the red horizon. Patong Primary School is exactly as it appeared in the film: dirty yellow buildings in the middle of the bush. On the adjacent football field, a circle of school children bang drums as they spin, stomping barefoot in the red dirt, singing folk songs as loudly as they can.

Day Two

I didn’t sleep much. A broken slat in my mattress kept me slipping through it all night. Around 3am the mosquito net frame came crashing down in the dark. I threw the netting aside and tried to ignore the mosquitoes.

By 8am I’m in the parking lot sorting through trucks for the equipment we need for this afternoon’s private screening of War Dance at the school. After a whole lot of wire-stripping and duct tape, the JBL Eon speakers are hooked up to a generator and mixer. We lash the rig into the back of a Toyota and send it through the camp blasting a radio spot for tomorrow’s screening.

Day Three

All the gear I’ll use today has been in Kenya for over a year — a system donated to Film Aid for screening educational films in refugee camps. First task: unpack, inspect, clean, and test everything with Steve from the African Medical Research Foundation and Charles from the Film Aid office in Nairobi.

To be continued.