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COURTESY OF KIMI TAKESUE

Kimi Takesue, bending at right, shoots footage of Ugandan children for her documentary.

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COURTESY OF KIMI TAKESUE

Girls sewing for a project associated with Hope North School.

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COURTESY OF KIMI TAKESUE

Filmmaker Kimi Takesue uses a camera mounted on a low tripod to record Ugandan schoolchildren.

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COURTESY OF KIMI TAKESUE

Filmmaker Kimi Takesue, a former Amherst resident, tells a story of modern Uganda in her project “Where Are You Taking Me?” screening Wednesday night at UMass.

AMHERST - Where are you taking me? Tens of thousands of Ugandans may have asked that question in the last 22 years as children were ripped from their homes and forced to kill in the country's long-running civil war.

But filmmaker Kimi Takasue, who grew up in Amherst and Hawaii, attending the same school President Obama once did, did not want to make a documentary that played on Uganda's prevailing images of war, poverty and AIDS. Takasue wanted to make something else, a complex and colorful portrait that spoke to the beauty and rhythm of everyday life there.

In her documentary "Where Are You Taking Me?", which will be screened at the University of Massachusetts Wednesday night on the heels of its east coast debut in Manhattan, the viewer is dropped into Ugandan streets as though casually looking out the window at day-to-day life. There is no narration, no establishing context. Shot in the style of cinema verite, the camera becomes almost a character in an unfolding drama, with many passersby reacting to it, and to its operator, with suspicion.

"I did not start with an agenda," she said, about the choice to make the images stand by themselves. "I responded to what unfolded, responding to a new place and environment. It forced me to be much more in tune with color and gesture and sound, while communicating outside of language - much more of a sensory experience."

Takasue spent three weeks in Uganda last year, traveling alone, a one-person crew, shooting with a DVX100 Panasonic camera.

The film opens with a long observational shot of motorcycle taxi drivers waiting for fares, alternatingly eyeing the camera confrontationally and flirtatiously. Where are you taking me? is something the viewer may well ask, as the camera lingers as a curious passerby might. Then, it's a high society wedding, with Takasue given privileges rare for filmmakers.

"I had intimate access, but it challenged my own stereotypes," she said of the affair, which started at 4 a.m. and went all day long. "I thought it would be modest, but there were between 1,500 and 2,000 guests, with well known pop stars performing throughout. I had never seen a more extravagant wedding."

Many of her subjects seem very much at ease, too, though the groom looks like he wants to die and the bride is painfully aware of it. He rallies at the reception, though. The candid shots of young women in the wedding party getting their hair done in a salon earlier that day features women seemingly unaware of the camera's presence, while Takasue shoots in extreme closeup.

"I try to be unobtrusive," she said. "Gradually, things become comfortable. Because of my own background, biracial, I blend into a lot of situations," said Takasue. "I feel pretty comfortable with a lot of cultural environs."

That said, she was called 'mazungo' a lot by Ugandans. "It just means whitey," she said, "but more of an outsider than anything else. A lot of African Americans go there and are called mazungo, too."

Other indelible moments: The tension of a girls' weightlifting competition; People under a tent waiting out a heavy rain; A striking image of young men working in a flour mill, their dark skin covered in white, another of those serendipitous moments Takasue talks about. "I'd see the men in the area, dusted with white, a ghostly image. They wouldn't bother washing off during breaks so I just followed them back to work," she said.

In one long observational shot, ghetto kids in a vacant lot just outside Kampala's slums take turns flipping off what, from the distance, appears to be a mini-trampoline. In reality, they were just bouncing off old rubber tires onto bare ground.

"People do amazing things without resources," said Takasue.

In one long segment, a cross section of middle class people on their way to work are shot from below, each one glancing at the camera with impatience. Though it appears to be Takasue shooting while lying on the ground, the effect is actually created by her tiny tripod. "It's almost like a toy tripod," she said. "I took a lot of shots low to the ground. The size of a tripod and the weight of it can be imposing if you're traveling alone, so I just angled it up from the ground."

"I'm interested in the meeting point, when people from different cultures come together and search for a mode of communication," said Takasue. "I was interested in creating a visually driven hybrid film that combines characteristics of documentary and experimental film."

There are dark-into-light segments shot from framed enclosures like "High Noon" or closeups of young Africans against breathtaking sky blue pink backdrops. Of the violence and the threat of more, "People seem to feel a lot safer," said Takasue. "It's only been a couple of years when it was NOT safe. I had to trust people I asked, 'Is it safe for me to go?' There was rioting in Kampala three weeks after I left, on the exact same streets."

Takasue was one of 10 international filmmakers who were commissioned by the Rotterdam Film Festival to make films of Africa while connecting with purveyors of the emerging African cinema. Takasue was asked to facilitate a dialogue with Ugandan filmmakers and Rotterdam, which led to many new works by African filmmakers being commissioned.

Takasue, recipient of the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim fellowship, has had her earlier films screened at over 200 festivals, including Sundance. She has produced and directed several projects for PBS and the A&E network and teaches film at Syracuse University.

Takasue spent her early childhood in Hawaii. Her parents divorced when she was seven and she spent a good deal of time going back and forth between Amherst and Hawaii to visit her dad, Dexter Takasue. She spent 8th grade at the Punahou School, President Obama's alma mater, which is not considered the greatest scholastic event in history, she said. "So many impressive people came from that school," she said, "some very accomplished people."

She was first exposed to still photography at Leverett Elementary, but her main interest at Amherst Regional High, from which she graduated in 1986, was drama, appearing in countless productions.

"One thing I appreciated most about Amherst was the quality of education and the emphasis on ideas," said Takesue. "It was a very nurturing environment; lots of diversity, but more a diversity of ideas."

She became interested in documentary filmmaking while at Oberlin College. "In the early 90s, my first films more theoretically driven," she said.

Her mother, Carolyn Anderson, a professor of communication emerita at UMass, is the author of two books and numerous articles on innovative documentarian Frederick Wiseman ("Titicut Follies"). Though Takesue was very much aware of Wiseman growing up, she describes her mom as a "modest academic," who did not force points of view on her daughter.

"Years later, when Takasue expressed interest in pursuing the art of the documentary, Wiseman's career was looked at with fresh eyes. "My mom had such an interest; it was a new point of conversation," said Takasue. "All my success I attribute to her; I'm lucky to have her as my mom."

Most of "Where Are You Taking Me" was shot in the main part and outskirts of Kampala, Uganda's largest city, until Takasue was invited to take a significant detour to the Masindi region of Northern Uganda to Hope North, a school founded by artist Sam Okello for children displaced by war, including many of the child soldiers who were forced into horror. Okello was one of those abducted children himself and has introduced as much art as possible into the curriculum. Takasue was hesitant to visit Hope North's 40 acre campus because, she said, "I didn't want to define these kids by the horrors of their past."

But children talked matter-of-factly about their years as trained killers. Some of the kids she filmed remember the killing in stark detail and still dream about guns. "Why do you want to take my story to New York?" asks one, almost tearfully, as if a memory is being robbed. "Why do you want to go with it there?"

Of that scene, the Village Voice called Takesue's secret weapon her "unnerving ability to zoom with uncanny focus into (and out of) individual perspectives-with or without close-ups-building to one electric encounter with her outsider-chronicler status."

In the end, in one long segment, damaged children ham it up for the camera and make each other laugh with their witticisms, as if the trials of their earlier lives included no more than the dog eating their homework.

"It kind of defines the whole Ugandan experience," said Takasue. "There's a lot of normalcy, kids going to classes. Their lives are complex and they're resilient. It's important to understand that they do have this past. After living in the bush for five years, it's hard to make up those years."

At the school, Takasue juxtaposes Okello himself teaching a drum crew outside while inside sullen teenagers study English. "It's so striking to see these kids being taught in a post colonial subtext," said Takasue, as the sentences being dissected include: "I am going to England next week; The attack on the city was called off; We will lay down our lives for our country."

Takasue's documentary was screened in Uganda, part of a two-day observational cinema workshop she led for independent filmmakers. Many of the folks who appear in "Where Are You Taking Me?" were invited to the showing. "They said they saw their familiar surroundings in an entirely new way," she said. "A lot of this kind of filmmaking is about that."

"Where Are You Taking Me?" was screened last month at the Black Cinema Festival in Geneva and had its U.S. east coast debut at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC last weekend, to great acclaim.

"This is a film small in scope and scale," said Takasue. "It's amazing to get such a great response."

The film will be shown Wednesday night at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass at 7:30, part of the Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival, now in its 18th year. It will mark the fifth time Takasue's work has been presented at the festival. 

"I hope that viewers will have this curiosity about this place, to think beyond earlier representations," said Takasue. "The film is not in any way a definitive glimpse of Uganda, but a personal glimpse of a complex and fascinating people."