Moses Serugo
African Movie Night Kampala will NOT hold screenings at the National Theatre anymore. This follows a deliberate effort by UNCC support staff to undermine our screenings everytime we hold them there.
A recent incident saw the person in charge of sound hide an audio cable that was vital to our Independence Day screening of “Punishment Island” which started an hour later than advertised.
In the past, we have had to grapple with late-arriving ushers, stagehands that lowered the screen late thereby not giving us ample time to calibrate our projector, dirty toilets, a dirty auditorium (we once had to grapple with a decomposing rat situation), callous box office personnel and faulty electrical sockets.
This is an indictment on the current inept management that doesn’t appreciate arts products outside the ones that guarantee a full house like the comedy shows and nursery school end of year performances. In using the National Theatre as a principal venue, our desire was to partner with UNCC to bring (and grow) an audience that doesn’t ordinarily come to the National Theatre, what with the bad rap UNCC has been getting over the alleged sale/ redevelopment of its Dewinton Road playhouse. Those that have been attending our screenings since January 2016 will attest to the unique African cinematic products we have been curating every month.
However, even with a fully-fledged publicity department, a marketing department and an education and research department, UNCC has failed to leverage on experiences like ours that were outside the traditional music, dance and drama disciplines.
This maltreatment increases our resolve as African Movie Night Kampala to acquire our own venue given our desire to present our patrons with a new African film every week (52 in total) for the 2018 calendar year. We are also on course to starting an SVOD (Subscription Video On Demand) channel and “exporting” the concept to other African metropolises that acknowledge the unique cinematic exhibition brand we have created over the past two years
