2019: The Unseen Archive of Idi Amin part 1

In May 2019 I helped create and install a groundbreaking exhibit at the Uganda National Museum: “The Hidden Archive of Idi Amin: photographs from the UBC”. This exhibit is mostly photos, but it also has about 30 minutes of time-based material from digitized films and audio tapes.

The promotional flyer for the exhibit and associated panels.

Here is a short video we made at the museum that helps to explain this exhibit.

This trip and the exhibit that we installed was the culmination of over 2 years of work. It started with my first trip to Uganda at the behest of Dr. Derek Peterson, a UM Professor of History that does his research in Uganda, to visit the UBC (Uganda Broadcasting Corporation) and discuss their options for digitizing their extensive U-Matic videotape library. That project may never happen for a bunch of reasons, but I remain hopeful.

On that trip, Derek and I discovered a large filing cabinet filled with thousands of 2¼ square B&W film negatives of Idi Amin’s official photographer(s). 

Derek examining the filing cabinet

On our return, we found a relatively small amount of funding for me to buy and set up a film digitizing system (laptop, scanner, archival supplies) and go back to Uganda for a week to set it up and train 2 grad students from Makerere University, Jimmy Kikwata and Edmond Mulindawa, to do the work. The project was to be supervised on-site by Edgar Taylor, a former Ph.D. student of Derek’s who has deep knowledge of Ugandan history and politics.  Over about the next about 8 months, they cataloged over 70,000 negatives and digitized over 25,000.  Photo of the setup below.

The digitizing room at the UBC.  L-R: Edmond, Jimmy, Jacob, Edgar

Meanwhile, 6 reels of 16mm film were found by Jacob Noowe and Malachi Kabaale who work with us as our UBC colleagues.  Edgar was returning to the USA in August 2018 and we got permission from UBC Managing Director Winston Agabe for Edgar to bring them to UM so we could have them restored and digitized at Colorlabs in Maryland.  They arrived in Ann Arbor at the end of August 2018 and went to Colorlabs on Sept. 27th.

And this one was in *good* condition...

Then in April our colleague Richard Vokes from the University of Western Australia had arranged for a shipment to UM of about 60 reels of ¼” audio tape of radio speeches by Idi Amin.  I supervised Mark Murrell - one of the few people other than me in Ann Arbor with significant experience with ¼” tape - in the digitizing, right here in the Duderstadt Center.  It took about a month.  All of them were baked first but only three were too far gone for playback.

We got the low-resolution film scans on December 27th, 2018, and the final high-resolution sections on May 9th.  I was to leave for Uganda on May 12th, so I had to work quickly to assemble the video and audio files for the exhibit.  Fortunately, Derek had put together a paper edit based on the timing of the low-resolution scans and audio files so it was mostly replacing low-res with high-res and tweaking the edit.

All these media resources became the source material for the exhibit that was installed on this trip.

My role leading up to the installation was to organize all the digitizing of the various media, edit together the media reel that is part of the show, and design the AV systems to be used for playback in the Uganda National Museum.  Here is the floor plan of the exhibit, rotated so I could make it bigger.

And here is a walkthrough I made with my iPhone which gives you an idea of how the floor plan worked out in real space-time:

It was about 2 months before I left that I was asked to come to Uganda and supervise the AV install, as well as to capture the public events and some private interviews, etc.  Here is a link to my instructions for repacking the AV gear of the exhibit.

INSTALLING THE SHOW

Doing something of this scale in Uganda is not without its interesting aspects.  For example, the electricity at the museum was off more than it was on.  For the opening day, we ran the LED lights we had installed along the timeline and the projector and sound system from a generator parked outside.  Fortunately, we did not require much power at all.  Much of the installation is actually more or less documented in my AV "How To" PDF, but there is more to tell about the setup and execution of all the events.

Here is a timelapse excerpt of Derek and Richard beginning to hang one of the post-movie-room galleries.

Me at the entry graphic.

Richard and me prepping the hang.  You can see the gap above the walls we had built where I placed the speakers.

The entry hallway with photos from the pre-Amin era - the colonial days.

The iconic "This way!" photo of Aminpointing to the door to the exhibit hall.
When this photo was taken I was using the same AKG mc stands to do Eclipse jazz concerts in Ann Arbor.

The galleries hallway.

The movie room.  I hung the speakers and projector and used the wall for the screen.

Signage outside the museum.

Richard taking photos in the Timeline hallway. We bought and installed he overhead LED lights.

One of the challenges was just finding things we take for granted here at home.  For example, these bins were what the hardware shopping looked like.  It was not a storefront per se, but the interior of a store opening with multiple stalls of vendors selling the same kind of stuff.  I did manage to find what I needed, but it was not Stadium Hardware.

 

This was one of a number of handmade tools available.

Me recording one of the pre-tours before the opening.

A couple of UBC crew absorbed in the timeline photos.

Reunited: Malachi, Jacob, Tom (me), and Edgar. 
In front of "the how we did it and thanks" wall, opposite the opening graphic.

"ACTUALLY, TOM, YOU'RE A VERB"

OK, now I get to brag a little bit.  When I first arrived and we sat down as a group to get organized, Derek said "So. Tom, you've become something of a legend at the UBC."  Before I could follow up we had launched into far more practical issues.  It was not until a few days later when, after a long day at the museum, we were having beers and dinner that I was able to follow up and ask "So, Derek, can you explain the UBC legend comment?'

And the Edgar piped up and said: "Actually, Tom, you're a verb."

Of course, I was fascinated: I had never even imagined this was something one could aspire to!  Edgar explained that because of the way I worked during the digitizing room setup - basically conjuring something out of nothing again and again - it had transpired that when the group needed to do something but had no resources to work with, they would just "Tom it".  That meant finding whatever was around and figuring out how to make it work to accomplish what was needed.  In other words, I had become the Uganda MacGyver...  Here is the blog entry that sort of set me up for this.

And we had a real live "Tom" moment during setup.  A nice young woman was having a very hard time trying to get the black backdrop for the panels to hang anywhere near to straight.  The critical issue was that she had no stiff rod or pole or something to which to attach the material. If it was on a stiff rod, she could then hang the rod.

So I asked Alex Odom, the wonderful exhibit installer for the museum, if he had anything long and not likely to sag.  He could not think of anything but took me to his 'storage' area, shown below.

I found 2 abandoned track light bars, which together were longer than the drape we were trying to hang.  I lashed them together with some tie line I had brought along, ad the used the black conductor form some extra speaker wire to attach the drapes to that.  And then we hung the whole thing.  It was not perfect, but it was much better.

The track light bars lashed together.  You can also see the black wire used to hang the drape.

The whole thing being hung.  You can see it is not perfectly straight, but once it was in place it was just fine.

So why is this exhibit so remarkable?  First, very little has changed in the Uganda National Museum since it was built by the British, so having a modern exhibit like this is unusual.

I've been told that over 70% of the population of Uganda was born after the era of Idi Amin, so this is the first time they have had access to first-hand artifacts of that era.  It is the hope of the museum that this will start a dialogue between grandparents, parents, and children about that era and what happened.

And finally, even for me, seeing 120 large B&W photographic prints along with film and audio recordings from the '70s is a transportive experience.  Most of the young people in Uganda have never seen an actual photograph, let alone so many in such a large format.

And it was the 1970s: it *looks* like the 1970s.

And that’s why I was in Uganda from May 12-24 of 2019.

Once the exhibit was running and the opening panels were done, we went back to the UBC.  In part to get organized for cataloging and digitizing the 35mm film reels, which were all that was left to do, and in part to look for additional reels of 35mm film.

That story is coming soon...

-t