Dilman Dila on Myth, Film, AI and Telling African Stories Outside the Gatekeepers - ep 32

[00:00:18] Hi everyone, welcome to Talking Tech With Creatives. I'm Stella Oni, your host. So if you've heard me before, you would know that I try to bring different guests to the podcast. And lately, it's just that you would have heard, if you'd heard Hamid Ibrahim, you'd know that I'm inclined towards a bit of filmmaking and production and moviemaking, especially when it comes to African stories.

[00:00:47] So I could not resist, I have another guest today who is going to tell us about storytelling and filmmaking, which is in the African context. So his name is Dilman Dila and he's a storyteller, he's a writer and he's a filmmaker.

[00:01:12] And I'm quite intrigued because an area that I don't know as much about, and I still try to do a lot of delving and asking questions is filmmaking. Translating the works, the written work to that medium.

[00:01:32] And Dilman, and Dilman fascinates me because he's not just a storyteller, but he's been able to translate that to film. And he's got quite a lot of short films on YouTube. I have a lot of questions for Dilman. Dilman, welcome to the podcast. I want you to tell us a bit about yourself.

[00:01:59] And just tell us a bit about your background. Let's start from there and how you came into writing and making film. Yeah, I started writing, I think when I was 15.

[00:02:15] Yeah, that's when I started. The first time I decided I'm going to be a writer. And then at that point, I was in secondary school and then other children, they started laughing at me. Well, what I do, this is your dreaming to be, you're fantasizing. It's not something that you can achieve.

[00:02:38] But then I started writing at that same moment and then everybody was looking at me and they then laughed louder. But yeah, that is when I got into trouble with my parents as well, because they were thinking that I'm not going to be able to pass my exams. I should focus on books and things like that. But then I stuck to it. Of course, I passed my exams even when I was doing my writing and I was reading novels a lot.

[00:03:08] And a lot of people could not understand how that was happening because I would barely attend class. But in retrospect, I think being an avid reader helped me to be able to grasp school books really easily because I would read for pleasure. So when I got to read for exams, it wasn't a task. It wasn't something burdensome. So I could easily read.

[00:03:35] So when I finished university, I, of course, wanted to, I looked around for writing jobs, but I couldn't find good, like I realized pretty quickly that I can't make a living out of only writing. And then this was the early 2000s and Hollywood films were a boom all over the continent. And yeah, everybody was watching them.

[00:04:01] And then I realized that, oh, I can actually make money from this kind of thing. And that's how I began looking into making films. I started learning how to, I taught myself a lot of it. Up to now, I still teach myself. Up to now, I'm going to teach myself a lot of things. And then along the way, because I like writing, I like creating science fiction works and fantasy, but creating them requires the knowledge of visual effects.

[00:04:27] And I began teaching myself CGI using computer software and things like that. And that's how I found myself doing digital art.

[00:04:37] So I find myself in a lot of art spaces using a lot of art mediums, though I'm more known for writing and filmmaking because I keep looking for ways of earning a living and surviving and to be, yeah, to live off my storytelling, not working in an office somewhere or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. So broadly, that is me. And I've been recognized here and there for my writing.

[00:05:07] Yeah. Been shortlisted in a few awards. The most recent was the Philip Kedick Awards for my book, Where Rivers Go to Die, which is my second collection of short stories. And then for film, I've won one or two awards, but within the continent. Yeah. And so that's briefly me in broad strokes. Excellent.

[00:05:31] And I think my audience will think I'm partial to Ugandans because you're the third Ugandan of the podcast. Because I heard Amidib Rahim of Kugali Media. Ah. And a lady called Shanae Gondo. And yeah, she too, she's Ugandan based in the UK. So I wonder what is in you. I'm very curious about what is in Uganda that brings some such brilliant minds and starting early as well.

[00:06:00] No, seriously. I think maybe it's where there is a lot of misery, a lot of trouble, a lot of political instability. We have to thrive in such kind of things because people look for ways of expressing themselves. They look for an outlet for this thing. And that's, I think, Uganda, we've had a pretty troublesome history.

[00:06:26] I think like many other African countries, but we had like very long periods of war. And up to now, every time we have elections, there's a lot of people dying. There's a lot of stuff that happens, which, you know, I think this kind of thing makes people want to make art to bring out their grievances and things like that. I think in broad, generally speaking, that will be it.

[00:06:53] But also, like most African people, we are very much in touch with our past in many ways. Of course, colonialism did not destroy everything. And one of the things that remain and that kind of, I think, for my case and for actually many people who I know, is the oral storytelling.

[00:07:16] It doesn't happen, of course, in the fantastical way we hear about like sitting under a big tree in the moonlight with fires and all that. But there's a certain vibe you get when two or three people are gathered somewhere. You will hear stories being passed around. Or if some men are drinking beer somewhere, they will tell each other stories.

[00:07:42] And as kids, as a child, these are some of the stories that kind of drove me. But even some of these stories are like, we have what we call night dancers in Uganda. What are those? Night dancers. They are night dancers. So what are they? Are they like, do they dance in the night? Yeah. Yeah, they do dance in the night.

[00:08:09] Actually, my most recent film is called The Night Dancer. It's about such a thing. But they have a mythical character. And there are many, like every village will have its own version of what a night dancer is and what it does. But the most popular version is that they eat the dead. So they make the dead come out of the grave.

[00:08:34] And then the dead person walks to wherever the night dancers have gathered. And then they have a feast. And so, yeah, this kind of is in the imagination of Uganda. You come here and you just mention night dancer. Someone will go for the story that, oh, I know the night dancer in this village. Or I know something like this.

[00:08:57] And it doesn't stop there because you end up seeing it in the newspapers, like the national newspapers on the front page. And there is a story about it. Yeah. Oh, my God. There are such stories. So there is a certain belief. And, yeah, people really believe in this kind of stuff. And some people, someone says, what doesn't exist doesn't have a name.

[00:09:26] And what has a name exists. So for Ugandans, the night dancers are there. What has a name existed? I love that. Yeah. So those are the things that fired up your imagination when you were growing up. So in terms of like books, for example, because say you got into reading. So where did you find your books and what kind of books did you read? I'm curious because I got into reading through my parents, through my mom's library and my father's library and the public library.

[00:09:56] So how did you get into reading? What was the football and all the sports that boys play? I actually discovered books a bit late. I think I was 10 years when I read my first book, if I remember properly. I think maybe I had one or two encounters with books before that. I remember my earliest memory is bagging my mother to buy for me a book. I think it was a red book.

[00:10:26] I probably had a spider on the cover. I don't remember, but I think it was a red book. And I was like bagging her. I was like, I want this book. I want this book. She had my money. She didn't want to release it. Yeah. Like the relatives who visit and then gives you the money. But of course, it's the mother who takes the money. And so I went to the bookshop and I saw the book. And so I began bagging her.

[00:10:52] I'm like, you use my money to buy this book. But the one that I actually remember reading, I was about 10 years. It was a West African book called Yo and the Python. I read it, I think, from the school library because that was the age when I was now allowed to access books in the school library. And that's cool. But at home, my parents, they were readers as well.

[00:11:21] My father, he was more into communist stuff. So he had a whole bookshelf full of communist literature. And it's only when I was an adult that I realized that these were handouts which, yeah, like free books. It's not like he bought anything. He probably subscribed to some communist publication. And then they kept sending him a lot of that kind of literature. But I think when I was about 12, I saw my mother reading a book.

[00:11:51] And it was also a red book, but not the same red book that I was looking for. Yeah. I remember seeing her sitting on her bed and reading this book. So when she put it down, I picked it up. And it was The Clocks by Agatha Christie. And I read the book. Yeah.

[00:12:14] And that's when I began now actively reading adult fiction because that was not just a children's book. I think that was, I was around 12 at that point. So by the time I was 15. The good thing I went to this school that had a big library. Oh my God. Yeah, like they had a lot of books, but most of it was from the colonial era. But I didn't really mind because there were storybooks.

[00:12:43] And so by the time I was 15, I remember trying to read 1,000 books. I don't remember how it ended, but I was on that mission. I was like, I have to read 1,000 books. Wow. And so I would go to the library every time and pick a book and try to read and try to read. So yeah, I was really obsessed with books at that time. But yeah, I never had that childhood where people, you know, they're having books in their early formative years.

[00:13:13] I started it very late, like around 10 years. It was actually because I grew up with my grandmother. My first nine, 10 years was with my grandmother. So I didn't grow up around books. My parents were in Britain. So I grew up, but actually, I know that being exposed to books early is good. But for me, I value the fact that I was not that exposed to books at that age. Because I had a different way of actually consuming or getting stories from music.

[00:13:43] Even politics was all from music, from TV. So I got everything from the streets and from the adults and everything going on. They're reading. So I believe, for me, I actually would not change that for myself. Yeah, I think it also worked well for me in that sense. Because this was the 80s and we didn't have a lot of entertainment. So we told each other stories.

[00:14:11] And every time, there was a lot of blood shedding almost every night. And whenever power would go, we would sit around in the kitchen when somebody is cooking. Either the mother or the house girl or somebody. And then we'll tell each other stories. And those are like some of my fondest memories. But then outside of that, even just at school, during break time, as other people are playing football, we told each other stories. A lot of stories. Of course, most of them were like stories of night dancers.

[00:14:41] But there are also other creatures. Yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of creature characters that I encountered in that formativium. Yeah. Things like Abiba and Abiba. People, they fly at night, but with fire coming out of their batons. Oh, my God. That is scary. Yeah. So by the time I began reading books, and of course, when I would see a dragon or I find

[00:15:11] a dragon in a book, I wouldn't find it so strange. And I would even find it a bit not, how do you say, not as entertaining as the characters I was used to. Because when you talk of a dragon, it's a monster. It's not a human thing. It's somewhere in the mountains or wherever. And it flies. It's a lizard. So it breathes fire. And you're like, oh, okay. That's it. But then you're comparing that with the story of a person who shoots fire, who farts fire

[00:15:40] while flying. And tell me how the dragon is better. It's a dragon. It's a dragon. It's a dragon than a human being. Yeah. Okay. By the time I started writing, I didn't like, yeah, of course, Western books, of course, influenced me. Yeah. And in the formatted years, there was a lot of Stephen King in my writing. Like, I look at some of my stories and I'm like, oh, okay, this is pretty close to this Stephen King book.

[00:16:09] And yeah, when you're learning how to write, you imitate somebody. Yeah. But once I got my footing, I think my mind just switched back to the old stories that I loved and the stories that I know are lacking in today's. Yeah. Because everybody else is telling stories about dragons and vampires and things like that. And yet the stories that are still in my head that I have had from the time I was a kid,

[00:16:38] they are far more interesting. The characters are far much more. Yeah. They are out of this world. And you don't even need a whole movie to enjoy them. Just one line and you know, you're laughing. But to a vampire, you need probably a series before you begin getting a sense of it. Like a picture. Yeah. So your stories. Yeah. Because I see that there's African folklore with speculative futures.

[00:17:04] So my curious, I'm curious about how the sci-fi aspect and there's a lot of speculative futures, some horror in your story. So you have a real blend going on there. So how did you arrive at what you felt was your, it's almost like a signature in a way. How did you arrive at that when you started creating, when you started moving from like

[00:17:30] the written word into story, into translating it to film? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I think, I don't know if I arrived at a certain particular style or like what I, but I think it's always been there with me. Like these are the kinds of stories that have wanted to be told. They have just been struggling in my head from the time I was a kid. Yeah.

[00:17:57] Like even futurism stories, people are always thinking of science and technology. And, but when they think of science and technology, they don't think of Africa or they don't think of our traditional ways of knowing. But then when I was growing up, I saw some of these in Amos Tutola's works, like the television handed ghost.

[00:18:21] And this Tutola was writing about a television and yet he did not ever see a television. Or that's what I read. I heard that by the time he died, I'm not sure when he did. There was no television yet in Nigeria, but he was writing about a ghost that has a television in his hand, which today you might think of as a phone because yeah.

[00:18:45] But in his book, The Bush of Ghosts, there is a ghost that has, can see things on its palm and it doesn't need to travel to wherever to see this. So that someone will say is magic. But of course, when you now look at what the world today, we have videos in our palms. There was a bit of science going on there. And growing up, we were hearing these kinds of stories.

[00:19:13] We heard of people who would turn mirrors into TVs and they didn't need to go wherever to watch something. They will do things on their mirrors and then they see all pots of water and they look into the pot or a calabash of water and they look into it and there's a TV there. Yeah. And of course, the connotation was that there is something magical about it.

[00:19:42] But at the end of the day, I keep thinking that maybe it's just an alternative way of knowing that we don't. That because if you look at our knowledge systems or our education currently, it all comes down from a very small part of the world, which is the Middle East and Europe. So, mathematics, physics, everything we are being taught in school, they originate from that area of the world. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:20:12] And then when you really ask yourself, like, is this the only knowledge that is there? Yeah. Yeah. But somehow we've been made to believe that this is the sum of physics. There is nothing else outside the laws of physics as we know them. But when you look at maybe Egypt, okay, Egypt is very close to that world. So maybe let me leave it out. But when you go to South America and you see all those weird civilizations that, you know,

[00:20:39] were there like 5,000 years ago, you have to ask yourself what laws of physics were they using? What were they standing at school? Yeah. Yeah. What was their mathematics? What were their mathematical theories? When you go down South to Zimbabwe with its big ruins, you ask yourself again the same thing. Yeah. How did they come up with such a giant structure if they did not study the mathematics that we

[00:21:07] are studying in school or the architecture or physics that we are being taught? Yeah. But maybe closer to my subjects is I keep giving the example of rainmakers. People, yeah, even now you hear rainmaker and you laugh. But then when you look at China, they're trying to influence the weather through something called cloud seeding. Yeah.

[00:21:34] And then, but when the African person is doing it, they're like, oh, that is juju. But then somebody else is doing it using science and they are calling it, oh, this is science and this is technology. I've been investigating rainmakers for a while. And those ones around my place. Yeah. First, there is a community in Kenya called Nga'i, Nga'i. And the meteorologists in Kenya actually work with this community to predict the weather.

[00:22:03] Because these people, they live near the forest, but they can predict the weather more accurately than the gadgets of the meteorologists. Because they have learned how to observe nature. They observe ants. They observe plants in this forest. They observe. And then they know, oh, it's going to rain. Oh, it's going to. Because when you then ask yourself, you'll never see ants drowned in rain.

[00:22:32] They will always know, oh, it's going to rain. And they go and hide. Yeah, they go and hide. Even birds, you won't find them caught in the rain where they can't find shelter. Actually, I rarely see that a bird is just, oh, all of a sudden it is raining and the bird has nowhere to go. So these people, they've observed nature and they can predict the weather.

[00:22:58] And outside, so going back again maybe to, okay, this is knowledge that we have it now. But then there's that which is already lost. Like when I read old books about rainmakers, I find them describing what was needed to make rain. Like in the Acholi, which is somewhere in northern Uganda, they had what they call rainmaking stones.

[00:23:26] But these stones could only be picked from particular rivers and at the bottom of the river. And then there were things around the stones, like you couldn't touch them with your bare hands. You needed to have certain medicine before you can touch the stone. Otherwise, you'd die. And in my simple mind, I'm like, this might have been some kind of mineral. Yeah, it's a mineral.

[00:23:54] And then you burn this, yeah, because this stone was supposed to be put in a pot and then with other herbs. And then they burn it and then to make rain. And I'm like, that kind of is cloud seeding. Because cloud seeding, they do something and to influence the clouds. And then rain comes. So yeah, there's all this knowledge that has been lost.

[00:24:18] But when I look at our systems, it's just about looking at things from a different perspective and asking yourself, OK, why are we sticking to only one particular knowledge system from a very narrow part of the world? And yet there's a lot of these other knowledge systems, other ways of knowing that have been lost.

[00:24:45] Of course, we're going to blame Christianity and Islam because they are the biggest culprit. And of course, colonialism. But colonialism brought Christianity. And I think Islam, to some extent, in some parts of the world. But yeah, colonialism, slave trade, those are the things that led some of these religions. And of course, as these religions spread, they spread with the concept of primitivity,

[00:25:13] people in Africa primitive, superstitious, and all that thing. So whatever they found here, they rubbished. And they couldn't, they were like, oops. They didn't even bother to study them because they kept with the preconception that there is nothing there. Yeah, you find a lot of, like, the architecture in much of Africa respects the nature.

[00:25:39] So there was a certain worldview that was predominant in the continent. But now because somebody has come from a place where the architecture does not respect nature, then they come and find mud hats, and they're like, oh, this is primitive. But they don't, they forget what is the, yeah, the worldview behind that hat. Because if you ask yourself, why is it that the whole continent had this kind of mud,

[00:26:08] and they never built with stones? Yeah, there is a certain worldview, which is very common in very many African cultures. And like from the communities I've studied, before people will settle in a place, before you build your house, they will tell you to defecate in that spot. And then you observe the insects that come to your feces over the next several days.

[00:26:35] And then based on what insects come, you either build or you don't build. But this was a very simple way of just acknowledging that you're not the only inhabitant of this area. And so you respect other inhabitants who have been there before you, and they are not human. They are not white. So of course, there was a bit of mysticism and spirituality involved with these belief systems. But I think, yeah, we've lost a lot through colonialism and through these kind of things.

[00:27:05] And I think if, say, we want to tackle things like climate change and whatever other ailments we are suffering now, it might be a good thing to just look back and see what our worldview was and what our ways of knowing were. And so this is how I kind of think about future works and futurism in my stories.

[00:27:35] Yeah. That is amazing. So the question I wanted to ask is in terms of, because obviously now there's anthropological aspects to your stories as well. So you're blending quite a lot. And of course, we know that with African civilization began in Africa. But a lot of things that were written had been lost. So we only have a bit of oral tradition. Not a lot had been lost in the past.

[00:28:04] And so because you don't have those written things, like you said, anybody can just come in and just assume the power that be. You can come in and just make any assumption that they want about that. But we now know that looking in the past sometimes does help, especially like you said, climate change. So let's talk about your filmmaking. So I wanted to understand the mechanics of you making those films.

[00:28:32] Making because not just the stories themselves, which I actually enjoyed. I'm a crime fiction author. And I was trying to watch Room 13. I said, oh my God, I don't want to be scared out of my boots. I saw that there were 8 million views on YouTube. Oh my God, I think it's going to scare me. Because I used to read horror when I was young. I used to read horror. And I know how for days later, my imagination is still fired up. So I said, oh no, I'm not going to watch it. But I watched a few others.

[00:29:02] So I just wanted to understand the mechanics of you now becoming a filmmaker. You were self-taught. That's number one. And you're going to tell me whether you had a desire to make other films. Or whether you were just really wanting to translate your own view into film. As opposed to going to go and translate other things. Yeah. About that journey. I think with me, it's always been like the kind of stories that I want to watch is what

[00:29:31] I want, is what I make. Because there's that advice. I don't remember who said it. That write the books you want to read. So when I was watching, even when I was coming out, of course, Nollywood is popular and all that. But I would watch the films. And then I would feel some of it was tackling the subjects that I love. Forget it easily. Yeah. But then the execution was not exactly engaging for me.

[00:29:59] And also even Hollywood films. Like maybe I give the example of Wakanda because everybody is crazy about Wakanda. And I watch it and I'm like, no, this is crap. Like it's a film that I actually hate. I watched it once and I'm like, I'm not watching this ever again. I don't even read the Wakanda comics. So yeah. Because I just found it to, okay, the way I want these stories to be told.

[00:30:26] And of course, fast is drawing very much from our mythologies and trying to be as authentic as possible to our mythologies. My problem with Nollywood is a lot of Christianity has watered down how they look at the world. And so some of their juju things is more about promoting Christianity rather than trying to understand what exactly was African spirituality. Yeah.

[00:30:57] Or in terms of medicine, there is just this looking at it in a black and white way of saying, oh, if it is coming from a sangoma or from a ganga or from a hydruga, then it's evil. And it's primitive, it's all this. And then it has to come from a doctor or from something like that. Yeah. A Western trained doctor or things like that.

[00:31:21] So a lot of, that was the problem I was finding with a lot of the films when I was starting out. I'm giving Nollywood because it's the most common thing. But there are a lot of other films that were, of course, being made on the continent. And then things like District 9, which is everybody's favorite African sci-fi. And I was like, what is it exactly? If you're talking about aliens coming to here, it was more like an American story than an African story.

[00:31:51] Because if you were to talk about aliens coming to an African city, you will probably have to contend with all the alien stories that were being told before the colonists arrived. And if you really think about it, a lot of our stories have people walking to the sky and coming back from the sky. And that is the more common one from West Africa.

[00:32:16] But in East Africa, there is a lot of such stories where people, he gets into some kind of, there is one I read about a guard. That they'll get into a guard to go to the sky. Another one will sit on a stool kind of thing. And then it will take them to the sky. But then I'll read these stories and I'm like, these are actually spaceships in our, we are thinking of them now. Yes.

[00:32:43] There are very few, like the one of Anansi where it's an animal weaving is like either, or a bird flying. But the vast majority of them, whether there is some kind of vehicle they are using, and this vehicle is like a port, a stool, or something like that. Or there is a portal. They go to a certain gate where if you reach that gate, you can go to the sky.

[00:33:09] And today we have portals, we have people jumping from one universe to another universe and all that. And so when I look at District 9, I'm like, yeah, if it is an African sci-fi thing, why not draw from that kind of mythology of people, of the kind of spaceships that we had before, and the kind of portals we had. And you might have had a more interesting story.

[00:33:35] And then the weird thing about all these space travel stories from the African point of view is a lot of them did not have aliens, but they had human beings in the other world. Sometimes the human beings had tails, but it was not like a monster. It was not like something totally different from what we know.

[00:34:00] The ones that I know, it's mostly like they have a tail, and that's the most thing that would differentiate them from human beings. But yeah, what I'm trying to say is there are certain ways of knowing, and there are certain mythologies that I wanted to bring out in my stories. And that's where I was sticking to a certain kind of storytelling. Even like with Room 13, at first it was a ghost story.

[00:34:25] It was just that I did not have the means of pulling off a ghost visual effect at that point, because this was in 2007. And so I made it a bit more mundane. But then it was a short film, and it did not need dialogue. I particularly set out to write a film without any dialogue.

[00:34:53] And for simple reason, at that point I was discovering the early films, early chaplains, and the silent films, which are very visual. But also I was reading about other filmmakers, and just discovering film. And there was this, all the filmmakers from the early years, 60s up to 70s, and they would all talk about film being a visual media.

[00:35:22] And you use as little dialogue as possible. But then at some point, filmmakers, it's not, I don't know if filmmakers became lazy, or if capitalism interfered with the filmmaking in Hollywood. And then everything just became about dialogue. And yeah, there was a film we were watching recently.

[00:35:44] I think it's one of those Avenger films where you just watch, you're not even paying much attention because it's basically popcorn films. But there was an explainer that was running on for two and a half minutes, where someone was explaining the universe. I think it was a Dockster strength thing or something. Dockster strength, yeah. I bet you they were trying to explain about... Yeah.

[00:36:14] I don't even know what it was, but I was like, really? Two and a half minutes and you were dumping it down for the audience. They didn't expect the audience to figure out things on their own. So when I want to make films and I'm making a film, that is my first point of, okay, I'm doing a visual thing, so I need to stick to the visuals. And whether you understand it or not, then you have to understand it without relying on words.

[00:36:44] And there's one film that I made last year. It's also a short film. It's called Lanyonyo. And there are like two scenes that have dialogue because I just couldn't... I failed to remove that dialogue from the scene. Yeah. But people watch that film and the dialogue is in actual language, not in English. So the two times they watched it in public here in Kampala, they forgot to run the subtitles.

[00:37:14] But then at the end of it, people understood what was saying. Nobody was confused. Even when they go to that scene, they're like, oh, we know what is happening. And so the dialogue was not even... Of course, you could hear the people talking, but even though you don't know the language, you could figure out what they were talking about. And then I was like, oh, okay. I'm really now proud of myself. Because when I was making it, I was like, oh, yeah, it means the dialogue has to be there.

[00:37:43] And I couldn't stop the actors from speaking. I couldn't create a scenario where they were just sitting and, you know, doing actions. Yeah. But somehow it worked. And I'm like, okay. So that was... Those are the things that I look out when I'm doing... When I'm trying to create films. I want to do something first that is steeped in mythologies that I know of.

[00:38:05] But also in the sense of style, it should be very visual in the sense of, you know, film being a visual medium. Yeah. But I think maybe some of it was also from the limitations of, like the situation in Uganda. We do not have a national language other than English. We don't have a local language which everybody speaks.

[00:38:32] So if you're to get actors, either they are speaking English or you're getting actors from one particular ethnic group. So... And sometimes, yeah, sometimes that becomes a challenge for me because I'm like, the story has to be told. If it's an Acholi story, there are no good actors in Acholi. So you probably will be forced to make... Yeah, you'll be forced to maybe make the film in Uganda.

[00:38:59] And, yeah, so these considerations also make me go, okay, I need to use as little language as possible so that the story is, yeah, universally understandable. And then I don't have to begin worrying about what kind of dialogue, yeah, language I'm using. And this was more so in the beginning years when I was just starting out.

[00:39:22] Of course, nowadays, there are more trained actors, so it is easy to find actors from whichever ethnic community you go to. But in the beginning, almost every actor was from a certain ethnic group, which was, yeah. So the question I want to ask, because for me, I feel that there's space for... That there's space for everything.

[00:39:47] I believe that there's space for commercial films, as popcorn as they are. And there's space for films that would look at things. Like, you know how the French would fund arthouse films? Because they know that those films are important. So I feel that there's space for all the films. And one should not override the other. But as we know, that's not the case. It's the commercial films, the ones that kind of override everything else.

[00:40:15] And when it comes to films in Africa that are really looking at what you're doing now, I think you've had to be quite creative in the way you're going about creating what is not deemed commercial, if you know what I mean, or popular. So when you made your film, did you go straight to YouTube? Or how did you distribute your film in the beginning? And how do you find the medium that you're using at the moment,

[00:40:44] along with the funding for your film, for your various... Yes. I think, first, of course, in Africa, the traditional... Because there's a lot of gatekeeping in African film. Apart from Nollywood, that broke out. But then it also created its own gatekeepers. Gatekeepers. For Africa, like the arthouse films, because I think my films should have been arthouse, maybe.

[00:41:11] There was a certain demand for what kind of films should come out of Africa. And when I was starting out, the films they liked were, of course, poverty, porn, trauma, films about AIDS, and things like that. And I think, to some extent, up to now, that is a kind of preferred thing. Even if they have this thing of, oh, we want to represent Africans positively, so they avoid certain topics.

[00:41:38] Yeah, I did struggle to get mainstream... By mainstream, the festival attentions. Because I remember the first film I made, The Felistas Fable. It was a fairy tale kind of comedy. And then I made it with another person. I won't mention them, but they made a film based on the Rwandan genocide. And their film, you look at it, and it was... It had a lot of technical errors. Actually, way more technical errors than mine.

[00:42:08] But somehow, their film traveled the world and kicked off their career. And then people would watch mine and they would rubbish it. And when I adopted YouTube, actually, very early, even before Google bought it. Oh, yeah. Because I remember... Yeah, I remember my... I put there my first film in 2005, 2004, 2008. Really? Very early. Yeah, when it was just coming out. Yeah. And it was a one-minute film, a horror film.

[00:42:36] And it got a lot of attention. And that was the first time I realized that I was like, okay, this life... Yeah. It was like, there is life outside festivals. Yeah, fantastic. Yeah, there's some life somewhere outside there. And so, since then, I began thinking about ways of reaching these niche audiences, like just direct to audience.

[00:43:01] And, of course, even when I made the Room 13, at first, I don't... I think it was screened in only two or three festivals, but all the main festivals rejected it. Wow. But then, YouTube was not the first place I put it in. I remember putting it in four of two or three other platforms, because before YouTube became the... I don't know, it's now the only video platform. MySpace. Yeah. Yes. There was MySpace.

[00:43:30] There were a lot of other spaces, video platforms. So, I would put them in these platforms, and then the film would get a lot of views. And I would get a lot of messages from strangers, like, oh, it's a good film. So, that would encourage you. Exactly. And then, I put it on YouTube. And then, it just took off on its own. And I think at that time, also, YouTube's algorithm was not as harsh as it is now. Yeah. It's so harsh.

[00:44:00] Because at that time, if people watch your film, you actually... It gets recommended more. I think it was based on who is watching and how much they're watching and all that. But at some point, I think 2017, YouTube started changing their policies. Some people say they were not changing, but they started enforcing their policies. Because there is, like, a small sex scene in group 13.

[00:44:27] And I got a message from them saying, oh, this film, it's for adult consumption. And I'm like, really? It's an art. You are not even seeing the sex scene. We see legs, but we don't see... There is no actual nudity. But because there was a simulation of sex, so it was first demonetized. And then, the algorithm stopped showing it around. And, yeah, over the years, YouTube's algorithm just kept getting worse.

[00:44:56] And then, at some point, your channel becomes popular. It gets more recommendations if... The more you produce films. So, like, you could... It was not like back in the day, you put out one film in two years and it can still get attention from the algorithm. In this case, like, they wanted you to keep putting out films, like, almost every other month or something. And that... Yeah. Yeah.

[00:45:25] And then, that kind of became more... It suits content creators. People like you. Yes. And so, I felt a burnout. And then, I just stopped doing stuff on YouTube. But then, around that time, I also discovered other online places. There was first Patreon, which was like a crowdfunding app. And then, I signed up for it. And, yeah, I got a lot of people who are interested in, like, just supporting my work.

[00:45:53] And then, they began sending me... Or pledging to give me some money each time I make a film. That's good. Yeah. But then, of recent, I joined... There's a... Feddiverse. What we call it, the Feddiverse. But it's Mastodon. Okay. There's a lot of apps on this. But what they are, is they are not... Okay. They are social media.

[00:46:19] But it's not social media that is controlled by a particular corporation. It's social media that anybody... Even you can set up your own social media, and then people join in, and something like that. But each of these platforms, they interconnect with each other. And I found it much more interesting, a nicer place to share my work. That have now... It's the Feddiverse.

[00:46:48] It is the Feddiverse. I mean... How do you spell it? F-E-D-I-V-E-R-S-E. The Feddiverse. Okay. Maybe to make it simpler. Feddiverse. You know? Feddiverse. Yeah. Like a universe, but... Like a metaverse, but Feddiverse. Feddiverse. Something like that. Never heard of it. So, do they have a lot of people that are attracted to that? Oh, no. It's not like... It's not about the numbers in the Feddiverse. No, no. Okay.

[00:47:17] I have... Niche. I have a... Yeah. It's a niche kind of thing, but maybe let me explain it in this way. Okay. It is like the internet was back in the 2000s. Yeah. Early 2000s. Yeah. Before platforms, like... Before this big tech began using algorithms to... And before they became media instead of social media. Yeah. So that is the best way to describe Feddiverse.

[00:47:44] And I'm mostly on Mastodon, which is... It's like Twitter, but much more nicer, you know? And then I've also opened up my own PRTube channel. Or not even just a channel, but my own PRTube server. So what do you call PR? No, PRTube. It's like YouTube, but imagine a YouTube where you control everything.

[00:48:14] It's not the algorithm to control what you're putting out there. So PRTube, like P-E-F? Yeah. PRTube. So the difference with PRTube... Like, if you look at my films on PRTube, the views are very few. Like 100, 200. If you get 300 views, it's like a lot. But then... Those 300 people are actually people who watch. And they are not watching because an algorithm has shoved the...

[00:48:43] You are getting quality... Views. Quality, yes. Exactly. You are not getting casual views. These are people who are keen and who will probably... They will back you. They are committed to your work. Exactly. Exactly. It is something like that. Right. Because with YouTube, like you look at the 8 million views on What Happened in Group 13, but you'll find the average view duration is like 3 minutes or 2 minutes. So that means people are not actually watching the film. But they're... Yes.

[00:49:12] But because the algorithm is counting the views. Yeah. So... Yeah. Yes. This is the difference with PRTube. And this is where I'm making it now, my main distribution platform. And of course, it's not a commercial place. Like you can't go there to make money, but you can go there to share your work to people who... And get creative. Yes. Yes. And then... So when... So I do crowdfunding a lot. And...

[00:49:41] When people watch these kinds of films, like I was saying, it's quality views, and then people actually enjoy it. And you just put their donate button and say, oh, please donate to me or send me some money. And then you find donations. And now, as I'm creating new short films, I find it easier to ask people to contribute to the films. Because they have watched something. I tried doing that on YouTube. But... Because... Yeah, because... Watching.

[00:50:11] Yeah, it's difficult. You need to create your own audience. Exactly. And the audience in YouTube is not a reliable audience. People are there because of the trends. They are there because something... The algorithm is shoving videos onto their faces. And then you're still watching this. And then something else is coming up. And then you click on the other one. So you even forget what you've watched like five seconds ago. Yeah. So yeah, looking...

[00:50:37] Going forward, I think this is going to be my main way of distributing films. I'll probably not be sharing on YouTube. But the other way also is just like even within Kampala, we keep organizing screenings. And it's not again red carpet affairs or big bang affairs. But I create small screenings where... Insolence. Exactly. And then you find yourself having one or two more new fans.

[00:51:07] And it seems counterproductive because with filmmakers, they want to go out and reach hundreds and hundreds of... Yeah, but it's... Hundreds of thousands. You might reach hundreds and hundreds. But what we're talking about, something that will grow. And we're talking about something that is not an overnight... You reach hundreds, you reach millions. Exactly. Sustainability. Sustainability. Sustainability.

[00:51:33] The idea of holding the audience and holding your followers or your audience. And they follow you all the way. I think that's the best thing. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I think... Yes. And that is... I believe also because at the moment, the way social media is going, it's become what they call entityified. It's becoming worse and worse. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's not...

[00:51:57] And I know like everybody is now creating like this hustle, like, oh, put your thing on YouTube, get followers or TikTok is the other thing. And they're making very short things, which, you know, I don't know how far it will go. But with sustainability, because I make about three or four films every year. And they're really intense films. Yeah. Yeah. Like, it takes me like five months to create one short film. Yeah.

[00:52:26] And I can do this with the support of the crowd, like people I get through crowdfunding and through... Yeah. And it becomes much more satisfying to me because I can now focus on, like, making a film. Yeah. Not thinking about it going to festivals. Yeah. Not thinking about it going to anywhere, but I'm just like, okay, there are these... Yeah. You don't want to... Yeah. Who wants to have control over your intellectual, your IP. Exactly.

[00:52:56] There's so much landmine. It's crazy about all these things. So you're able to do this on your own for, yeah, quite a long time. And now... Since 2017. Yeah. So now we're in the era of new tech, AI and all that. So the question I want to ask is, how are you going to harness AI? Are you... In terms of how you want to create?

[00:53:25] I'm talking about... I'm not talking about maybe in film or in cinema, but any kind of way that you're going to use that tool as a tool or as an assistant. That's number one. Number one. Number two. As the future approaches and things are more automated, there's going to be... I believe that there's going to be a shift towards community and people like yourselves are going to excel in the new world.

[00:53:54] I don't know if you believe that or not. So let's start with AI. No, yeah. That's what I see. That's what I see. So let's start with AI first. What's your opinion? AI. I don't think that's a technology that's going anywhere. It's going to make a few salesmen rich. But for the ordinary filmmaker, it's not going to help them at all. Because it's not... The way it is being...

[00:54:24] AI, the way it has come out now, I think they rushed that technology. It could have been helpful. It could have actually been a game changer. But I think they were looking... They were more after the money than perfecting the technology. And so as it is now, it is pretty useless. And there is more of a hype around it than an actual functionality.

[00:54:51] If you look at Coca-Cola, they make an ad, their Christmas ad using AI. Yeah? And they're saying we used very few people. You get... But then to make that ad, they spent 70... Or they made 70,000 shots of an equivalent of shots. They made 70,000 videos before they could come up with that... You got 60,000. You get...

[00:55:21] So this now, you begin asking yourself like, okay, how efficient is that? Yeah. Because if it was human beings doing that art... They would craft it. They would craft it. Yeah. They would craft it and they will not do 70,000 shots. Yeah. I'm saying shots because I'm used to shots in the film world.

[00:55:42] But then there are other problems also with AI because one, it's going to benefit only the tech companies, not the actual filmmakers. If you look at maybe Sora or wherever it is, you as a filmmaker, you're not going to have any skill in creating a visual effect. You're going to write prompts and then the thing vomits out whatever video it's giving you.

[00:56:10] But you won't know how to make that kind of thing. And so you're going to become dependent on the other thing. And then anytime they want to increase their prices, you're screwed. You get it. And then, yeah. And it's just not... I don't think it's going anywhere the way it is. Because even for the tech companies themselves, they are not ever going to make money out of this technology.

[00:56:38] In the sense that the more people use AI tools, the more expensive it becomes for them to run it. Because even just with my own small computer here, which I use to create my visual effects, the more I'm running it, the more the GPU wears out. And then I have to buy a new GPU. And this is just one GPU with just me doing my small films and all that. It's not even a massive...

[00:57:07] But on a global scale, imagine you have one million people all using your GPUs. And the more you're running it, the more power you're using, the more water it is consuming. And at the end of the day, you're spending more money to create this one video than it will... So they are not ever going to make money. And of course, there is also the ethics of using AI,

[00:57:34] which is the first thing that made me not ever want to use AI. I, of course, in the beginning, like everybody else, I played around with the tools and to see what was possible with it. But then once it became clear that they are not paying people, that they are stealing artists' work to train their models, I was like, okay, this cannot... This is not fine. You can't just steal people's works and use it to train models in the name of progress.

[00:58:04] Outside of that, it is also harmful to the environment. It's burning more carbon. And then the worst of it is that it's making human beings compete with technology for natural resources like water. So you find a town is competing with a data center for water. And I don't know which world I would want to live in where... You're competing with the machine to run. Yeah, the machine for drinking water.

[00:58:33] That just doesn't make sense. So at the moment, I'm not ever going to use AI in my workflows. There are some tools. They are called... They might have been branded as AI, but they are not. The people who make them don't put this label AI. Of course, because AI has been given a bad name. But... What about those? Yeah, it's like an automation, of course.

[00:59:03] It makes them work easy. Like in Blender, there are some plugins. Like there is one called Kintools. It helps you if you want to track someone's face and replace. Like now I don't have glasses. And if I want to put glasses on my face, I can create a 3D mode of my face and then have the glass on it. Something in simple terms that is it. But this tool runs locally on my machine.

[00:59:29] I don't have to depend on a tech company somewhere to use this tool. Or there are others like for motion capture, where you can arrange just smartphones around a human being. And then the person makes movements and then that tool converts that movement into motion on a 3D space. It is useful because you're not banning the environment or you're not using the whole town's water to make that small video.

[00:59:58] You're using your computer, you know, and just as much power as you can afford to use. The power that you use every day is what you're using to create this tool. And also in DaVinci Resolve, which is like one of our main editing softwares, you'll find they have a lot of such tools that you can use within your computer. And I think that is a more ethical way. And I will use some of these kinds of tools, but they are not generative.

[01:00:27] You cannot just say, give me a video of a cat dancing on a table. And you get that video because that is not the point. First, if I'm to do that, I have maybe to model the cat and maybe I can use the tools to make the life easier. To maybe capture my motion and then transfer that motion to the cat. Those are acceptable uses of AI.

[01:00:50] But yeah, with the way it is being marketed now, like you just generate videos and you get whatever you want to get out of it, it's not going anywhere. I don't think it's... In a year or two, it probably will be... If you remember crypto? Yeah. At some point, everyone was like, this is the future. But where is it now? It is still there, but it's only used by criminals. A few criminals are the ones who use it.

[01:01:21] Yeah. There was also NFTs. It was a craze. At some point, everyone was like, yeah, NFTs, it's going to be the craze. But now nobody is even talking of NFTs. So there's a lot of these tech things that keep coming up. And because of capitalism, they push it onto people. And then they're claiming, oh, this is the next big thing. This is the next big thing. And yet it's just, you know, snake oil? They are selling, yeah.

[01:01:50] They are selling snake oil, basically. Convincing people, like trying to make money out where they shouldn't be making money. Yeah. So, yeah, that's it with AI. I don't know of any artist, actually, who is embracing AI. Unless there are artists who don't know what they are doing. Or they are bad artists. The ones who can't actually do anything are the ones who are running to AI. But people who can actually get stuff done.

[01:02:20] Like people who've learned how to draw or who really want to use their talents. I don't see anyone going for AI. Yeah. Yeah. I want to talk about what is, what, how do you see yourself in the next five or ten years? What is your ideal thing that you would want in the space that you are in now? Because I can see that you're not interested in being, in going the popular route or anything like that.

[01:02:50] You're very much focused and very committed to how you make your films and what you make. I think where I see myself is just maybe growing a crowd. I don't want to call them fans, but just people who enjoy my films. Okay. I'm gathering them. Yeah. Yeah. Just engaging a lot with such people. I probably look at myself having some kind of platform.

[01:03:16] Maybe you can compare it with Netflix, but not a subscription-based thing. Yeah. I have a PRTube channel. I'll probably see people, a lot of people following the PRTube channel. I still make short films, a lot of short films. And put them on PRTube for free. And then there's some good, maybe one or two dollars that comes in. And it's not going to make me super rich, but at least it pays the bills.

[01:03:45] And it builds for creating that film. I think if I reach that kind of place where I am making work with people who enjoy the art, and it's not being driven purely just by money-making thing, then I'll say I'm in a good place. Of course, I don't fool myself. We are in a capitalist world. And sometimes you have to do capitalism to survive in this world.

[01:04:15] But I'll probably look at it from a more human kind of place. If, of course, one of my films takes off and then I get maybe $10 million out of it or $20 million, I'm not going to throw the money into a river and say no. Yeah, but of course, I'll probably put it to good use and find, yeah, build a theater in Kampala.

[01:04:44] I'll probably use my money for something like that. Build just some community thing that people can enjoy. Because even now, with the little money I've made, I built a studio. And it's more of a community kind of thing. For my youth. Yeah, emerging filmmakers, they have access to it for free if they work within our collective. So, yeah, I'll probably use the money for something similar.

[01:05:11] Yeah, I'm thinking maybe also the model that we know today might collapse, the filmmaking model, the mainstream filmmaking model. Festivals will still be there, maybe. But the way of making money through either selling to Netflix or selling to the broadcasters, that might go away. It might not stay.

[01:05:36] You might find a lot more people like me, like just independent artists having their own small thing somewhere. And then the consumers of films, they spread themselves out to all these other things. I think that's already happening with Hollywood, with the studios. Like the studio model might be collapsing. Yeah, I think it is.

[01:06:01] Yeah, they are going more for the smaller, or basically crew, like the DFX artists, the DOPs, the what. They're probably going to get more work in smaller establishments than in Hollywood. And maybe Hollywood will remain for... The big people. Yeah, the popcorn things. But the vast majority of filmmakers might be working in independent... Independent. Yeah, I'm happy about it. Independent.

[01:06:31] Yeah, something of that kind. So in terms of your crowd, do you communicate with Denver, like things like mailing lists and all that? Do you have a mailing list? Or what's your main form of communication? Apart from saying, give me money. I have my website. People, they read the things, but they don't subscribe to the mailing list.

[01:06:55] So the crowd that I'm in, they are probably not very keen on signing up for email things. But there is other ways that I reach people. I just put out a blog post, and I don't follow the stats too much, but I do see people reading and it reaching to people. Of course, with a place like Mastodon, because there is no algorithm to dictate what people see on their timelines.

[01:07:24] So the people who follow me there, when I post, they all will see what I've posted. And so it gets a much bigger reach than if, say, it is an actual mailing list. And then some people, they use RSS feeds to access my blog. And yeah, because you subscribe to it, you don't have to go to your email. Even me personally, I don't like subscribing to things on my email.

[01:07:53] I just keep email for work and for serious stuff. But so I think a lot of people are like me. I have a newsletter option, but it doesn't, I don't think, there are probably 50 subscribers or 60. And that number has been there for a long time without any new people coming on. Yeah. But... Sorry.

[01:08:18] Yes, but I think the important thing, like, if you want to reach out to people, is to be consistent in whatever platform you're on. And if you're consistent, whether somebody subscribes by email or they don't subscribe at all, they will come and find your work. And I think that is... Yeah. Yeah. So in terms of... I just wanted to ask about... So do you... So in terms of making a living, is this...

[01:08:46] Do you do this full time or do you make a living in other ways? No, I make films full time. That's fantastic. I love that. Your subscribers are looking... They're looking... Patrons are looking after you. It's not actually... Patrons and Patreon, they cover the basics of production basics. Like, so that I don't make a loss. Okay. Not exactly a loss, but say I want to shoot a film. I need to pay actors.

[01:09:16] I need to buy food, transport people. You have to budget. Exactly. So what my crowdfunding does is to cover this. It's not to make a profit. And once I've covered this, then I can make the film. And after making the film, I still put it out. And then whoever donates, donates. But also, sometimes I get the money from fees. Okay. Screening fees.

[01:09:45] Like when a festival screens and all things like that. Yeah. But a lot of the times we get money from grants, really. Yeah. I wanted to ask about that. Yeah. Grants. Yeah. Because probably, that probably makes the, pays the bills. Because with the grant, you can write and say, oh, I want this much. You can breathe. And then, and stick on to you. You can. This is an important part of culture that you're doing. So grants are very important.

[01:10:15] They are very, it's vital to what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah. But of course, the grants wouldn't come if I was not, if I did have the crowdfunding and the patrons to support. Because a grant comes and people say, oh, you're doing all this work. And then it's easier for someone to give you the grant than if you don't have anything. Yeah. So another question is, so do you, so how about future filmmakers who are interested in doing

[01:10:44] what you're doing at the moment? Do you have any forum or any advice for young filmmakers or any kind of forum where you, where you'll be teaching them or teach, pass your knowledge across? If they're in Uganda, we already have a huge training program. Oh. It runs in five districts, but we have a collective, a film collective where emerging filmmakers can come and learn.

[01:11:11] And if they're in Kampala, they can use my studio for free. They can use, I can give, I give them equipment for free. Outside, we, I think we work with some organizations like there's Lolwe. It's a magazine, but they have these trainings that they keep doing. And if somebody signs up for the Lolwe trainings, I think there's some small fee that they pay, but it's another opportunity.

[01:11:39] But the thing that I'll maybe encourage, of course, when I say I'm self-taught, it doesn't mean I never got any mentorship from anyone. I think almost all, I had a lot of mentors here and there. Of course, it was not formal. It was not a school thing where I sit down and work. But I had to learn from other people. Either this was through books.

[01:12:07] I bought filmmaking books and I read them. Or I ran into filmmakers and then I would ask them. And so the problem that most filmmakers or emerging filmmakers, the mistake they do is forgetting that it's a learning process. And then somebody makes one short film and then they imagine they have arrived. The film might actually go to festivals and it does very well. It's to be consistent.

[01:12:34] And then, yes, and then they jump into future films. And now they want to make future films. And then, yeah, I think it might work, but I think learning never stops. And yeah, I think even right now, I've been making films since 2007. In my hard drives, I think now, yesterday I was clearing out space. And there was about 100 GB of tutorials. My God.

[01:13:04] Because every other day I'm downloading a tutorial and trying to figure out, oh, how do I do this? Every other day. So it never stops. And I think if you want to go far in filmmaking, that's the attitude you need to adapt. And just know that you will never know everything. And even when I do a short film now and I light it properly,

[01:13:32] the next time I'm going to do another film, I just go online and look, okay, how did this person light their film? How did this one do their thing? Because with art, it's not like accounting or those other jobs where I want something. That's it. Like you do the formula and you'll get the same result. You do the formula, you get the same result. Filmmaking is an art form. And like any art, it keeps evolving.

[01:14:01] It keeps changing. And how you create that art is never aesthetic. It's never an aesthetic form. And you have to keep evolving. Of course, the technologies. Of course, avoiding technologies like AI. But just figuring out how other people are doing the things. How you can also improve on how you do your stuff. I've never had a film where I'm like, yes, I know everything. I'm going to do everything.

[01:14:28] There's always something that I learn from that project. And it's just because even the tools we are using like five years ago are not the same tools we are using today. Yeah. Yeah. That's, yeah. That's again the other problem with a lot of, especially in Kampala, all the ones I've seen in Kampala. I'll find a light person, a gaffer. But the way they were lighting 10 years ago is the same way they are lighting today.

[01:14:55] And I've had challenges with some of them. We've had big quarrels. Now, we can tell them that human, 10 years ago, you were using only the small LED lights. But now we are having 2K lights. We have 4K lights. And they are very cheap. Yeah. You have to learn how to use these lights. But they get stuck in a certain mindset. And they know that this is how I do things.

[01:15:20] And so even when they get the newer lights, they still apply the same techniques they were using 10 years ago. And then you find that they are not actually lighting, but they're just flooding the scenes with light. Yeah. Yeah. So the best advice I can give anyone who wants to make films is, yeah, that learning is, filmmaking is a continuous learning process.

[01:15:45] You never, ever reach a point where you say, this is it. I've now known. See, even when you look at films like Mad Max, Fury Road, there's always a lot of experimentation going on. That's what I noticed, yeah. Yeah. When they were shooting the day for night, because they shot Mad Max during daytime, but a lot of, there was a formula for shooting day for night. And these guys were like, no, we are not going to do that.

[01:16:14] We are going to do it in a different way. And they overexposed the films instead of underexposing it. And the traditional way of shooting day for night is you try to underexpose so that you get the night feel during that time. Yeah. And these guys were overexposing, doing the exact opposite. And I think somebody had to sit down and teach themselves and say, oh, if I overexpose, what am I going to get? Experimentation, yeah. Yes. Exactly.

[01:16:43] Experimentation is probably the right one. Yeah. But I just call it learning because when you're experimenting, you're learning new things. Yeah. So you never stop learning. Yeah. You don't. So I wanted to ask about, so in terms of equipment, when you started out, how did you build up your equipment? And do you find that a challenge now, apart from lighting and the gaffer? You find it or, yeah, fine.

[01:17:12] Equipment has become very cheap now. And yeah, like very cheap. Because when we were starting out, when we were starting out, we, like, it was hard to get good cameras, first of all. And we couldn't, even just getting film equipment, it was very expensive.

[01:17:36] But then starting around 2012, when the DSLRs became very cheap, filmmaking gears just began dropping in costs. And so right now, for $1,000, $1,200, you can get a cinema quality camera in the Blackmagic Pocket 4K. But then phones, like, I remember starting out teaching around 2016, we were teaching people how to shoot with phones.

[01:18:05] But right now, the way cameras have become so cheap, you don't even need to do the phones anymore. But if I'm stuck, I can still get a very good picture with the phone instead of going for a very high-end camera. But yeah, equipment, it has become so cheap that, yeah, very cheap. And the barriers to entry have gone so, so low. Yeah, we don't struggle too much as we used to.

[01:18:35] How about the tools? Because you need your computers and the editing tools. What tools do you use? What editing software do you use? With the computers, that is where the problem still lies. Yeah, because you need computers with good GPUs. But still, the GPUs are also getting cheaper. Maybe the thing with the AI boom might flood the market with very cheap GPUs at some point.

[01:19:04] Because once the bubble bursts, you might find there's a lot of GPUs floating around and people will be able to get stuff for very cheap. But yeah, with computers, I mostly use open source software. And they've actually helped me. And I stopped using things like Adobe because Adobe, it became n-shittified.

[01:19:30] And it just became unsustainable to use Premiere Pro or Photoshop or things like that. And so what I do, because with every product that is out there with a very high price tag on it, there is an open source alternative that is free and as efficient as that high priced thing. So for Maya, there is Blender.

[01:19:56] And Blender, actually, the film that won the Oscars, two Oscar films have used Blender. And Blender is an open source software. They film everything, everywhere, all at once. They use Blender for the visual effects. And then recently there was Flow, which was entirely made on Blender. So it's what I use. And it's a free open source software. I don't pay even a coin to use it.

[01:20:21] But sometimes, of course, out of appreciation, I support the developers of Blender. There are other tools like Creature and GIMP. Yeah, there's Addo for music composition. So Krita, how do you spell Krita? Krita is K-R-I-T-A. Okay. It's basically like Photoshop. But yeah. Mostly it's artists who use Krita. Pardon? What for music? You said? Oh, for music, Addo.

[01:20:50] A-R-D-O-U-R. A-R-D-O-U-R. So Addo. A-R-D. Yeah, something like Addo. Yeah. I don't know how they pronounce it. All sorts of names for music. Yeah. Yeah. And then there is LMS, which is the lower end, the lower version. And also there was Audacity, which replaced Audition. Yeah.

[01:21:16] But then it's also, it got bought up by someone who is ruining it. And so there is, there is a fork of it. Okay. Okay. Audacity. Yeah. But now there's the other one you can use. It's called Tenacity. It's the same thing. So with me, yeah. What I do, if I'm looking for any software or any tool, I know there is an open source alternative somewhere out there. Yeah.

[01:21:43] And I, yeah, it's always very efficient, as efficient as the one that has the price tag on it. And you'll find people using words like industry standard, but these are all just marketing gimmicks. Because, yeah, it might be, yeah, it might be industry standard to Europe or to Hollywood because, yeah, but if you're in Africa and you're not ever going to go to Europe and to

[01:22:12] work in Hollywood, what industry are you talking about? Yeah. Wow. I won't let, sorry, because I should have asked this question. I just want to ask about your process. So you get your script. Do you start with a short story or do you just write a script? I know you love your visual work, but so what is your process for filming? Yeah, of course, I always start with a script. Okay. I can't film without a script. Yeah.

[01:22:41] But, yeah, normally I keep them separate. Short stories are short stories. Films are films. Okay. I don't, there are some stories that I retell in a different format, but it won't be the same story. Okay. Yeah, but always I will start with a script. And the script is for me is always the very first or the most important thing. So unless I'm really happy with the script, I won't even think about shooting.

[01:23:10] The first thing I do, of course, is to make sure I have a very strong, of course, the characters, most of my stories, they revolve around characters. And it's more about the characters and their journeys and what they are doing. I rarely try to write the stories with like what they call high stakes, where the whole world is about to end and then only one person can save it. No, like one character's world.

[01:23:39] No, one character's world is about to end because I want to love Clu, the poor woman. Oh, yeah. Yes, exactly. So those are the things that... I thought the world was ending. I should have to do something about it. Exactly. I just focus on the individual. And I like stories that revolve around the individual. So even some of the stories I'm creating now, they seem like they are big stories. The short film that I'm going to make, which I'm crowdfunding for at the moment, set in the future.

[01:24:07] And it's this world without capitalism, without governments, without politicians. And it's just ordinary people. Yeah, but that will just be a container. And then the story will really focus on the one person and his wife having an argument over fish, chicken, over chicken. And yeah, but all these other things will come out and people will be able to enjoy the world. So you mentioned short story and then you mentioned film.

[01:24:37] So can you tell me the difference between the two? Films are short stories. Yeah. Because a film... Yeah. Yeah. A short story is something you can consume in one sitting. And in most cases, films, you consume them in one sitting. Yeah. But in literature, we have a short story, which is like prose. Yeah. Yeah. Like you write maybe 5,000 words or around there. And it's not... Yeah.

[01:25:06] It's easier to do it because unlike film, which needs actors and equipment and all the visual effects with a short story, you can just write whatever is happening. And it's just text. I think that's the difference that I'm talking about. Yeah. Because I had... I'm doing this series of short stories set in Lagos in Nigeria. And it's indecutive. And I've written about... I think I've written about five or six stories set in the same universe. And I've been... Yeah. The same universe, the same.

[01:25:34] But I'm not writing as a novel because... Well, I've been thinking that if I wanted to make it into a film at some point in the future, would it work? Because there are three series of short stories. So the same person doing different... Like a series. Like a higher... Yeah. Of course, anything can work. If you look at the... Wanuri's film... Jam... What was it? Rafiki. Because it came from a short story. It came from a short story called Under the Jambola Tree or something like that.

[01:26:01] I think normally it's about the ability of a screenwriter to adapt the material from whatever written form it is in. So there's nothing... There's no... There's nothing which is impossible with adaptation. The only challenge is if a material doesn't have like enough need to like maybe warrant a feature film or a TV series.

[01:26:28] Then the person who is adapting it will probably have the liberty to create stuff. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. To push it into a feature length thing. Like Rafiki, I think it was... The short film, the short story, it was very compact and it couldn't go into a feature film. But of course they had to... They could build up on it and create something completely. Yeah. Yeah. Because what I was thinking was a series of...

[01:26:57] You know how you have all these TV detectives every week? You have a different story but the same characters. Ah. Yeah. Same character but doing different things. So... Oh, it's like a serialized kind of thing. Serialized. Yeah. Yeah. It is possible. You develop it as a series then but normally what you will do is first develop the world because with the TV they don't write the episodes or like the person creating doesn't write the episodes.

[01:27:26] They might write just the first episode and then they create the framework for how the series will... Yeah. Who is this detective? Where does he live? What kind of person is he? There are all those things that they have to figure out and also what is the selling point of the series? Like what triggers the stories? Yeah. Is it a comedy? Is it a horror? Yeah. Then once you figure that out... Yeah.

[01:27:57] Then of course the producers take it in. Yeah. The producers take it up and then you have a team of writers who come and see it and then they blow it up into proper scenes. I'll change your story. So we've come to nearly the end of this. This is fascinating. Sit down and continue to print all night. So where... If people want to connect with you, where do you want them to? What's the best place? I know you've got your website. Yeah.

[01:28:26] dilmandila.com Yeah. Is it Dealman... Yeah? Dealmandila.com Dealmandila.com Yeah. And then Dealman Stories on YouTube. Deal Stories YouTube. Deal Stories on YouTube. Anywhere like... Yeah. PeerTube channel. Okay. Which is... PeerTube channel. It's tv.dealstories.com Okay. So... And then they'll find it.

[01:28:54] And then, of course, on Mastodon, you can get me on at dealmandila at mograph.social. Okay. Yeah. Mograph. Mograph. Mograph. Yeah. Yeah. The Fediverse, they have weird ways of creating handles. Yeah. Yeah. It makes that whole long thing. Mograph. Like graphic, yeah? Mograph.com Yeah. It's motion graphics. It's basically a server. Mograph. Okay. Okay.

[01:29:24] It's a server for motion, for VFX artists and things like that. Okay. So, and then you do like Instagram or any of those kind of... No, I left all the... You left on hitting yourself away. No, I left because they were not working for me and they were just becoming really horrible places. So, I deleted my Facebook. I deleted Twitter. I deleted Instagram. Yeah.

[01:29:53] YouTube, I still tolerate it because... Don't delete. YouTube is still... Because it's a... For me, like that was the first place I was able to find you on YouTube. Ah. So, please don't... I tolerate it because... But it is becoming a bad place as well because they are shoving AI onto everything. And then you open a video and then there is an AI narrator and you have not allowed the AI to narrate your thing. Oh. Yeah.

[01:30:23] There's all that happening. I've seen some... Especially... With using popular faces and his AI voices. And it's... My goodness, what's going on? Because these are like popular faces who probably are not the ones. Yeah. Wow. So, why would I stay in such a platform? And also, like now, maybe if you do this podcast and then somebody is listening to it in French, then the AI is going to use... In French. In French. The AI voice in French.

[01:30:51] And yeah, it becomes problematic. I better go and do it myself in French then. I've not even bothered with any language translation. I've not even done any of those things. Yeah. They are apparently not even asking for permission. Yeah. So, I better go and do my thing myself. No. They are not bothering. I can see that. Just using people's original material. But thank you so much for coming for this interview. I've really enjoyed it and your process.

[01:31:19] And please don't delete yourself from YouTube. Thank you too. I will go and find you wherever you are. I will go to Pierre. I will go to Pierre. You'll find me on PierreTube. PierreTube. Yeah. That's my main go-to place now. Yeah. I'll go and look for you. Because obviously, you are really like for your fans. Yeah. Just for your fans. If you don't. If you're not interested. Which is the future, really. That's if you are. Yeah. The future. Because there's going to be.

[01:31:49] There's so much proliferation of machine produced things. That everybody's looking for genuine people to follow now. Because I don't want to follow an AI person. I want to follow somebody. I want to follow them genuinely. So, I'd rather join their community. I'd rather go and find out. And I'd do my research and go and find out. And follow them. I'd rather be following the whole everything. The whole bandwagon. Yeah. So, I'm not into that at all. But yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you too. Thanks a lot, Dilma. Okay. Thank you. Bye. Bye.

[01:32:20] So, that was Dilma and Dila. And that was a very interesting conversation that we had. I'm still diving deep into filmmaking of different types. And this is completely different from the people I've spoken to. You have. I spoke to Hamid Ibrahim of Epo Gali Media. And I remember quite a few other filmmakers that I've spoken to. Each doing their own thing. And film as a medium is so popular.

[01:32:50] But you can see that someone like Dilma has found a niche. He's not even interested in any popular, like going through the gatekeepers or going through festivals. He wants to make the film that are true to himself and true to what he wants to convey. And the people that are interested in him are following him and funding him. And then he's getting funds from grants.

[01:33:14] People like him, I feel, are quite important to the future of authentic expression of filmmaking in Africa. And I think what really impresses me is him looking for different mediums to convey his art. Because if one medium, for me, my fear is always that a medium, a website, a platform could die.

[01:33:38] If you're a creator, a content creator of any type, then make sure that you are on as many platforms as possible. So that at least, for me, I always feel that if one of my articles should, so even on my website, if my website should ever go and not be functional for the future, I make sure that my articles are on as many platforms as possible. So that before they die, I'll see the future. They'll still be on the internet for a while.

[01:34:07] I really admire his commitment to his art. And the roots he's followed in being true to what he does. So, yeah, the Mandila. Filmmaker, short storyteller, author. Thank you very much for listening to me. If you are watching this podcast on whichever platform that you're on, review it, review it, like it, follow, subscribe. If you're watching on YouTube, subscribe.

[01:34:36] I need my subscriber, I need my followers, the people that are subscribed to go up. So subscribe to me. The more people I have, the more I'm encouraged to continue to talk to different people and look at how technology is helping them in their industry. So, yeah, thank you very much for listening to me and stay well. Bye. Bye.