The Uganda Film Unit Archive: Digitisation, Research and Restitution

This three-year project is focused on a recently rediscovered collection of c.600 news and public information film reels shot by camera operators of the Uganda Film Unit (UFU) c.1947-1981, an arm of the Ministry of Information, a majority made under the Idi Amin regime (1971-79). After shooting, the reels were sent to the UK’s Overseas Film and Television Centre (OFT) for developing and editing. The OFT master copies have recently come to light in London, where they are held in the archives of Associated Press (AP). The 600 films – the vast majority of which have never been screened – are of immense historical importance. They represent the most complete media archive ever found of Uganda, documenting as many as 1000 separate events and containing the only known footage of key moments in the country’s history. Yet, the collection is also of global historical significance. A preliminary review points to major insights into colonial and post-colonial media, Pan-Africanism, African decolonisation, Cold War geopolitics, and the history of developmentalism in the Global South. Above all, it provides an unprecedented window onto the Amin years – that most notorious, brutal and opaque episode of Africa’s post-colonial history – and into how Amin, like many demagogues, used state media to amplify his populist appeal. The project brings together interdisciplinary scholars with expertise in Ugandan and African visual and media cultures and experimental ethnographic methods with Ugandan partners, and specifically the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC). Winston Agaba at UBC has been a partner in the development of the project and will co-lead research in Uganda. The aim is to realise the value of this archive for post-colonial scholarship, and to reconnect it with, and to reactivate it for, contemporary Ugandan publics. The project has four key objectives: To work with AP to complete the digitisation and cataloguing of the films, and to map the contents of the collection. A majority of the digitisation is completed (funded under a pilot project); therefore, the primary focus for the first stage is content mapping to underpin the subsequent research. To undertake historical and ethnographic research, generating new scholarship that positions the films, and the events, people and places captured in them, in relation to key themes in colonial and post-colonial media in Africa and the history of the Amin regime. To reconnect the films with Ugandan audiences through a programme of digital restitution co-designed with project partners. The research team will use digital copies of the films to elicit collective memories of the Amin regime; in addition, a selection of films will be broadcast on national television by UBC. To facilitate artistic responses. Artists, photographers and filmmakers will be invited to engage with the film content, generating new narratives and interpretations. Project outputs will make a significant contribution to African Studies, media history and post-colonial studies, and benefit wider publics, not least Ugandan communities. Moreover, it will provide a model for future research and restitution projects focused on colonial and post-colonial media.