General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait
General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait
•
1h 30m
Directed by Barbet Schroeder • 1974 • France, Switzerland
In 1974, Barbet Schroeder went to Uganda to make a film about Idi Amin, the country’s ruthless, charismatic dictator. Three years into a murderous regime that would be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ugandans, Amin prepared a triumphal greeting for the filmmakers, staging rallies, military maneuvers, and cheery displays of national pride, and envisioning the film as an official portrait to adorn his cult of personality. Schroeder, however, had other ideas, emerging with a disquieting, caustically funny brief against Amin, in which the dictator’s own endless stream of testimony—by turns charming, menacing, and nonsensical—serves as the most damning evidence. A revelatory tug-of-war between subject and filmmaker, GENERAL IDI AMIN DADA: A SELF-PORTRAIT is a landmark in the art of documentary and an appalling study of egotism in power.
Up Next in General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait
-
Barbet Schroeder on GENERAL IDI AMIN ...
The following interview with Barbet Schroeder was recorded at his home in New York City in 2002. Schroeder set up his own production company in 1964 and produced such films as Eric Rohmer’s MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S. Since 1969, he has had a distinguished career as a director of both documentaries and n...
-
Andrew Rice on Idi Amin
The following interview with Andrew Rice, author of “The Teeth May Smile but the Heart Does Not Forget: Murder and Memory in Uganda,” was conducted in New York City in August 2017.
-
Barbet Schroeder on GENERAL IDI AMIN ...
The following interview with director Barbet Schroeder was conducted in 2017.
