My journey as a filmmaker began as a visual artist. I am not someone who likes to talk about myself, so this article will say a lot but also say little.
The first time I realized that I was an artist was at the age of 4 or 5 when I was in pre-school and the teacher gave the class an assignment of drawing a water tap. It was a fine art class. The tap was to be copied from a picture in a tutorial book that every student had. My neighbor, whose name I don’t remember other than the fact that she used to eat pencil rubbers, finished before me. She had drawn something that resembled a cow’s head. My other neighbor, who liked to fight, finished right after her. I thought there must be something wrong with me because I was taking longer than them.
The kid who liked fighting drew something that looked like a spoon, the cool watch kid in the back drew a snake shaped tap but with eyes (I know it is nursery but there were no eyes in the illustration) The girl who once swallowed a coin wrote her name and no tap and the mathematician kid, who had peed on himself the day before, drew a tap but in 2D, way ahead of his time perhaps.
By the time I was done drawing, all my neighbors had surrounded me, mouthing words of admiration and also jealousy. For instance the cool watch kid decided to go back and redraw his tap such that it looked better than mine. That day, the teacher praised my effort and had everyone clap for me, which I didn’t see very well because my head was buried in my hands out of shyness. Thereafter, she put a spell on me, saying that when I grow up, I shall be an artist. The math kid is a doctor today. I doubt he still pees himself.
I call it a spell because a spell can either be a blessing or a curse. Some might disagree, but this can be true with creative arts. I might have been a part time artist, but ever since that day, I chased the creative arts like I was possessed. The silver lining being that I enjoyed the process.
I have always liked stories. In Primary school, I drew a lot of comics and wrote a lot of short stories. Safe to say, I always topped the class when it came to composition writing. I remember a superhero comic that I started with four friends and each of us had a superhero character we would write about and then they would all come together in each of our comics, kind of like Marvel’s Avengers. It was the most famous comic in school. So much so that it got us in trouble with teachers and we had to keep the comics within our small cult, and limited outsiders.
The politics of those comic groups was quite interesting. Unlike sports and fashion, comics do not earn you any points in getting girls. This was no trouble since we didn’t even allow girls into our comic groups. The one or two who got in had to first bring tributes of new comic books and only earned associate status but with no privileges; they only read comics after everybody else and for limited periods of time and only in class.
Reflecting back makes me realize that it was a sexist community. We did have one original girl member though. But because she had been around for so long and she was also drawing comics, we did not consider her a girl.
I also have to mention that I used to also be very good at storytelling, in the oral sense, especially retelling stories. I could start narrating a movie I watched to one person in class, acting out all the scenes and gesticulating all the effects and by the time I’m halfway, I’m surrounded by multiple people. It was either that or playing my role of class clown. I don’t think I am as good of an oral story teller now as I used to be.
Like I had stated, comics do not earn you any points with the girls, and therefore I did not make any more comics at high school. But where comics stopped, writing began. When I finished high school, I started blogging throughout my university life especially in the areas of humor, satire and social commentary. I was always drawn to comedy and current affairs but not limited to that. I also wrote fictional short stories on many subjects including mysticism and sci-fi. If I had more time, I would talk more about that as well.
From there I was able to start script writing, after going for several trainings including one by Mobile Film School in Gulu by Dilstories Film Studio. I loved film because it is basically comics but in motion. And even though I don’t emphasize it well enough here, I was a movie watching addict.
I always had the dream of creating the great Ugandan film, or even the great African film. I believe that the appeal of a good film stems from good writing, and I felt like I could create an impact in the region if I focused on well written films.
I immediately went into writing and directing after that, thanks to the mentorship of pro filmmaker Dilman Dila, fulfilling the spell/prophesy my pre-school teacher had cast upon me. After that, in 2023, I was unable to continue writing/directing because of personal reasons. This made my filmmaking gears rusty and coming to Sisi film lab and joining the collective has been to oil those gears and find ways to transform the spelling cast on me all those years ago into a blessing. I hope to create many stories here and change the film and writing landscape in the region.
Much love y’all.
Mukama Kevin Rushokye
Check out my two blogs via my X handle: @kevvman