In Uganda, a filmmaker makes gripping $200 action flicks

With luck, a stylish blow could become a stunt in the latest action movie to emerge from this tin-roofed collection of houses known as Wakaliwood, named after this Wakaliga neighborhood.

Here is the engine of Uganda's tiny film industry, the source of $200-budget movies and a glimmer of fame.

Dozens have signed a "Wakaliwood Wall of Fame," often because their characters died in a film, staggering dramatically as condoms filled with fake blood spattered in a hail of mock bullets.

With the help of an improvised green screen and digital editing tools, Wakaliwood actors can take aim at the Eiffel Tower or drop from the sky into the middle of New York's Times Square.

Nabwana called the movie the "first action movie made in Africa, by Africans, on a low budget" — an extraordinary claim considering the presence of Nigeria's long-established and equally raucous film industry, Nollywood.

[...] Moses Serugo, a long-time film critic in Uganda, said he gives Nabwana high marks for innovation and for making movies about the East African country and starring Ugandans.

A former mechanic uses scrap metal and other materials to fabricate all the props, including a small-scale helicopter and machine guns.