A Ugandan art form

And – surprise! – it is a quirky art form. The artists are called VJs, as in “Video Jockeys,” and they have an annual competition called the VJ Slam as part of the Amakula Kampala International Film Festival, which is winding up this weekend.

Here’s the deal. There are lots of movies available on DVD (yes, many of them pirated) in English or with English subtitles. But even though English is the “official” language of Uganda, there are many people who don’t speak it well or at all. But they still want to see movies!

Enter the VJ. These guys – and they seem to all be guys – work in places called Video Halls. While the movie is playing up on the screen, the VJ is doing a simultaneous translation into Luganda, the local language in the Kampala area. Or, rather, a simultaneous interpretation – because they don’t translate word for word, they embellish, dramatize, spice things up. The good ones end up recording their special versions on DVDs and selling them for home consumption.

At the VJ Slam, they have a preliminary round with the crowd voting to narrow the field down, then there’s a final round at the National Theatre, which I attended while Theresa and Phil of Africa were off having dinner with elephants. Like everything else here, there were technical glitches, and it was nearly two hours late starting, but at least I got to see it first-hand. The VJ sits on a chair watching the screen (all VJs have previewed the film extensively to work up their act). There’s a small camera aimed at the VJ, and they project an image of him at work up in a little window on the large screen showing the movie, so you get his expressions as well as sound.

It is definitely a competitive business, with lots of creative flair. The guys throw themselves energetically into the translation, doing dramatic, rapid-fire, fluidly musical-sounding Luganda. The audience shrieks and hollers. All of this under a star-filled tropical sky on a dark night in an open field outside the National Theatre. Who needs elephants? THIS is a unique bit of Africa, too.