No Comments// Posted in blog by admin on 08.18.09.

We’re in North America at the moment, finalising plans for the second round of filming in Uganda. We’ve secured travel costs and are now fundraising for equipment rental, accommodation and post-production.

We’ll be flying into Kampala on the 6th of September and will spend the first week with the Basua in Western Uganda, near Bundibugyo in the Semliki valley, before returning to the capital to conduct interviews.

The response to the project has been very positive so far, though some are (rightly) concerned about how a documentary can actually help the Basua. There’s no easy answer to this. Our goal is to portray their current situation and make sense of it through historical reference.  In this, we are greatly helped by the trust that Stan Frankland has built up with them over a generation, and the insights he has gained.

It’s clear that the Basua are heavily stigmitised within Uganda due to taboos surrounding their life-style, their marijuana smoking, their perceived vagabond existence. What is more, unlike certain other pygmy groups who have developed a more acceptable approach to tourism, the Basua are also stigmitised by outsiders, by tourists themselves.

“I do still feel, as I did ten years earlier, that the nature of tourist visits to the Bambuti [Basua] veers uncomfortably close to reducing them to a freak show exhibit – look at the short people, shake their hand, snap a photograph and off we go.” – Bradt guide to Uganda, 2007

They are seen more as a problem than as a people, and we would hope, at the very least, to create a three dimensional portrait of their situation and let their story come through in their own words.  Ultimately, we would hope that this project might help shift the debate in Uganda towards greater recognition and understanding of the Basua.

photo by Amos Kahana

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