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WAAAAGH, ACTION!: Ramon Film Productions and African action movies

Started by Cohaagen, December 12, 2011, 06:43:52 PM

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Cohaagen



Action movies, along with Wham bars, dreadnoughts, heavy metal and Scottish Terriers, constitute one of my life's unconditional loves. I am undiscriminating in my tastes, happily watching everything from multi-million juggernauts such as Terminator 2 to the truly awful Cyborg Cop. I have seen films so obscure and terrible even the people who made them probably haven't watched them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BymeLkZ7GqM
Who Killed Captain Alex: a question never to be answered?

Recently I discovered that Uganda, the former British colony in Eastern Africa, is home to a small but thriving DIY action film movement. Ramon Film Productions is essentially a one-man outfit led by the inimitable Nabuwana IGG, or Isaac God Geoffrey, a fitting middle name for a man whose films instinctively make you exclaim "Jesus Christ!".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqJcFpzQV6c
an interview with IGG himself

A big-headed bastard to be sure, he carries himself with the unshakeable assuredness common to many self-made auters. His self-belief is total, and with seriously limited resources there is no doubt that his features are made on front, gall, spit, gaffa tape and boundless confidence alone. A separate print exclusive from Uganda's Dispatch magazine merely confirms this, and while the whole interview is a classic it offers up a number of gems worth quoting here:

Quote from: IGGRecently there was a movie shot in Uganda "The Last King of Scotland". I see nothing there that I cannot do and it is a pity that they can take away that money to Hollywood to edit such a movie when I can do it.
QuoteWe are working right now on a film called "Rescue Team" which was given to us by a student of Lubiri Secondary School. We are working to transform it into a real movie. He is not a professional writer.

Though possessed of a supreme confidence that approaches self-delusion, he is at least honest:
QuoteWe do training from watching movies like those of Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan. Another advantage we have is that my brother is a Kung fu teacher. He joined the NRA sports team sometime back and that is where he learned Kung fu in 1988. We joined together and I left because I was weak.
QuoteWhen I am asked "Who killed Captain Alex?" I cannot answer because he is not in the film. When I watch the film I cannot tell either but when we do part two that is when the question will be answered.

On dealing with the law-enforcement squares who for some strange reason decided that it was inappropriate for a bunch of grown men who run around in the jungle with wooden guns to use helicopter gunships, body armour and other military hardware:
QuoteI remember one time I had a discussion with police officers at the National Theatre as filmmakers and we requested for permission to use items like choppers and they insisted we are not yet ready to do such a production involving choppers.

But it was this comment in particular made me want to kiss him:
QuoteI do not find the story movies attractive and even here in Uganda when you talk of a film people are more interested in action movies like those by Arnold Schwarzenegger. The rest are just stories. I grew up knowing that real movies are action movies.

What make these trailers and movies so entertaining? Firstly, it's not because I'm/we're laughing at poor black people - you only need to see the astonishing FATAL DEVIATION to know that the white man can fuck up and make himself look like a spectacular prat too. And of course, people laughed at the crummy acting, chicken squawks and "hai-ya!" chops of cheap kung-fu movies in the 70s and 80s...at least they did before the likes of John Woo, Ringo Lam and other Hong Kong masters revolutionised action movies in the early 90s with their incredible stunts and ultra-stylised camerawork in solid fuckin' gold classics like Hard Boiled and City On Fire. Western directors, with their slow-moving dollies and unimaginative set-ups, appeared constipated and palsied in comparison. And after the recent wave of dynamic Korean cinema prompted another humbling of the roundeye, perhaps the next flourishing of action pioneers will come from the darkest continent of all...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RSD_Y2H_fA
The Return of Uncle Benon: fuck boil-in-the-bag rice, ACTION makes my day!

Let's be honest here: these films are utterly ridiculous. The woefully amateur "acting", crazed voiceovers, preposterous action, feeble props and excuse-level plotting are plain for everyone to see. But as funny as they most certainly are - and seeing a CGI PredAlien kick a baby off-screen in Ghana's 2016 is practically the dictionary definition of the word - I have nothing but respect for IGG and his contemporaries. He is determined not simply to make African films for an African audience, but Ugandan ones, as he has stated explicitly his exasperation at the flood of Nollywood flicks from Nigeria which dominate theatres in his country. Surely we as Britons we can relate to this stifling cultural imperialism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJFWj1S9DNo
Operation Wembley: hallowed ground

Personally, I think it's fucking great to see this spike of creativity from a country which has suffered so much tragedy in its recent past, including war with neighbouring Tanzania, the depravities of Idi Amin Dada, and an ongoing terror campaign by the Lord's Resistance Army in the north. Tight-assed western artists and critics would no doubt like to see these painful events dealt with in slow-moving, depressing "art" movies which they can then review in a ghettoised "World Cinema" section with patronising approbation, using terms such as "catharsis" and "cultural rapprochement", as if seeing a guy in a vest fly through the air in flames after being shot with a wooden "bazooka" doesn't count as a cleansing of the spirit in itself. My own view is that an outpouring of joyous cartoon violence is one of the best signs of a return to cultural normality there is. When I was a kid my childhood afternoons were spent in the woods playing Japs And Commandos with cap guns, and pine cones for grenades. I can't think of a time in my life when I was happier, less filled with hang-ups, or more creative. My own instinct right now is that something special would be captured if, instead of funding another tedious $100,000,000 effort from Christopher Nolan - a guy so fundamentally boring he managed to make dreams look like a crap game of CounterStrike - we gave half that amount to IGG and told him to let rip. I have the sneaking suspicion that the result would end up the cinema equivalent of that car Homer designs in The Simpsons, but with Western film and Hollywood in particular stuck in a closed feedback loop of remake, reference and smug knowingness - it's not even a regurgitation of existing work at this point...more like refried vomit - I don't think we've got anything to lose from giving a cash injection to guys who have already put together a body of work that effectively amounts to the greatest directors showreel in history. And as for the zero-budget, endlessly entertaining films that are already out there, all I can say is:

GET YOU COPY! YO!


More trailers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut-slBeASNo
Rescue Team trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJe58VNS7aw
Trailer for Tebaatusasula

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oUw3-kaDBU
2016, a new sci-fi effort from Ghana

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWaN8b-FwDI
12 00 1, 2, & 3 - another example of madness from Ghana

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRi9qHi1VIs
The Godfathers part 1 & 2

ThickAndCreamy

Magnificent first post Cohaagen, helping to summarise why I love these, and IGG so much. I've never read that interview before either and it made me nearly cry with joyous laughter.

He reminds me of being 10 again, sitting in my room one day watching a terrible Kung Fu film on Channel 5. I was struggling to understand why films have character development and why there are so many sections of droning chat. Why can't action movies solely involve one liners and action. Explosions, absurd ways of killing and an all out ultra-unrealism pervading the entire film. I want to see endless waves of death and creative destruction, not someone discuss romantic ideals.

He seems to share this view, and has such an endearing passion for action films that it's hard not to get caught up into it. It's the low quality, cheap and outsider feel of the trailers and his ideas that just blow me away. It's just startlingly hilarious, the way I wish all action films were, overblown to the point of surreality, yet still managing to retain a cultish edge.

Phil_A

2016 looks absolutely brilliant! Tim & Eric couldn't have edited that trailer better.

Cohaagen

Quote from: ThickAndCreamy on December 12, 2011, 07:58:11 PMHe seems to share this view, and has such an endearing passion for action films that it's hard not to get caught up into it. It's the low quality, cheap and outsider feel of the trailers and his ideas that just blow me away. It's just startlingly hilarious, the way I wish all action films were, overblown to the point of surreality, yet still managing to retain a cultish edge.

He reminds me a lot of Mike Borchardt, the subject of American Movie, one of the best documentaries about film-making ever made. They both share the same ambition, bluster, ineptitude, and sheer determination along with an inexhaustible enthusiasm and love for what they're doing. Ultimately I think the thing I like most about IGG is that he seems to be completely without cynicism, a quality that practically defines Western directors today.

Quote from: Phil_A on December 12, 2011, 08:12:13 PM
2016 looks absolutely brilliant! Tim & Eric couldn't have edited that trailer better.

Even if you just flatly write down all the things that happen in the mere thirty seconds of that trailer it is hilarious, while still managing to sound like the best movie ever made:

-two Predaliens with glowing red eyes talking to each other
-a guy being floored by a flying CGI motorbike, then his head going "splat" and spraying blood when he hits the deck
-a Predalien with a huge gun in its chest shooting at a guy who dodges the bullet in Matrix-style bullet-time
-as above but with a big ninja throwing star
-an African Gary Coleman noisily remonstrating with someone off-camera
-a CGI Terminator stopping a ninja throwing star with the "Dim Mak"
-a woman screaming as she is flattened by a red computer-generated sports car thrown by the Terminator
-another Predalien kicking a car at some guy
-yet another Predalien taking a man out with a flying karate kick
-the absolute highlight: the Predalien booting a baby off-screen to a stock effect "aaargh!" scream
-man throwing a huge motorbike off screen one-handed

DROP YOUR POO-POO NOW!

Barberism

Oh my god. Thank you!

Someone making films for the pure joy of it. Brilliant to watch and bloody hilarious!

Cohaagen

Some helpful soul has uploaded the whole of both Who Killed Captain Alex and The Return of Uncle Benon to YouTube. I watched Uncle Benon when I was steaming last night, so I can't remember much except that I had to mute it because of the annoying voiceover, and that I laughed so much I slid out of my chair at least twice.

Non-stoppi deadly kicksi!!!

The Return of Uncle Benon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFPmRLw56cU

Action-packedee movie!

Who Killed Captain Alex (in HD!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjB_JDRE_NQ

Uganda sounds like my kind of place. I seriously need to learn some Lugandan or Swahili and get myself down there. Even their rank homophobia is hilarious.


Don_Preston

I've got Captain Alex on now. Not since 3 Dev Adam (Santo and Captain America Vs Spider-Man) have I had a head-in-hands headfuck of having no idea what on Earth's going on. It's like finding someone's action-packedee home-movies. I'm sure this is just exposition - I've an hour and a half left!

It's worth it for the narrator alone, especially when he becomes very excited and for when he dubs over the woman singing karaoke with his own crooned excerpts, laughing during the action, breaking out into song and recapping the film's title.

The opening post and the whole topic is one of the best I've read in a long time.

I love what you do, Cohaagen.

Cohaagen

Quote from: Don_Preston on December 15, 2011, 06:11:26 PM
I've got Captain Alex on now. Not since 3 Dev Adam (Santo and Captain America Vs Spider-Man) have I had a head-in-hands headfuck of having no idea what on Earth's going on. It's like finding someone's action-packedee home-movies. I'm sure this is just exposition - I've an hour and a half left!

It's worth it for the narrator alone, especially when he becomes very excited and for when he dubs over the woman singing karaoke with his own crooned excerpts, laughing during the action, breaking out into song and recapping the film's title.

Apparently in a lot of African countries, particularly in rural areas, they hire narrators to explain the dialogue and action in Western films when they can't afford professional dubbing or people can't read subtitles. Why they needed to do that on an African film I don't know!

Quote from: The Boston Crab on December 17, 2011, 12:48:24 PM
The opening post and the whole topic is one of the best I've read in a long time.

I love what you do, Cohaagen.

I am glad someone here likes me because no one else (in real life) does.