Zak, who lives in Brixton, is excited about the prospects of his film.
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A young filmmaker from Brixton is preparing to shoot his first-ever documentary — shining a light on the untold human cost of wildlife conservation in Uganda.
Zak, 21, will travel to Mount Elgon National Park this July to spend six weeks living with an indigenous community displaced by conservation efforts. His self-funded documentary will explore how policies designed to protect wildlife can have devastating effects on the people who have lived on the land for generations.
“It’s my first documentary, and honestly, it’s a bit terrifying,” Zak admitted. “But I feel this is an important story that isn’t being told — and if I don’t do it, who will?”
Zak first encountered the story while researching an essay at university, finding reports by Ugandan journalists about controversial ‘fortress conservation’, which fences off land to protect wildlife but often excludes indigenous communities.
“Indigenous communities are essential to a thriving ecosystem. They interact with the land and are as much a part of it as any plant or animal”.
With no previous filmmaking credits, Zak turned to crowdfunding and grassroots campaigning to raise the £5,400 needed to get the project started. Alongside running a GoFundMe page, he works shifts at two Brixton cafés, where he used everything from QR-code T-shirts to posters to encourage donations.
“It’s tough when you’re new, and you don’t have any content to back you up and prove ‘I can do this’”, Zak said. “But I realised if I could get people to care about the story, they’d want to support it.”
Zak has also enlisted two Ugandan filmmakers to join the project for two weeks, ensuring local perspectives are central to the documentary’s narrative.
He credits his home city for much of his progress. “Brixton, and London as a whole, has been amazing,” he said. “It’s such a connected place — I might not know anyone in the film industry, but I know someone who knows someone. That’s how I ended up with post-production support from a major studio in central London, completely for free.”
Absolute Post, a post-production studio in London, have offered to do all of the post production required for the documentary for free. Zak says this alone is worth about £200,000.
Zak’s determination has caught the attention of industry figures, including Johnny Keeling from the BBC Natural History Unit, and he will attend a storytelling festival in Botswana later this year to network with African filmmakers and distributors.
Despite the scale of the project, Zak says his overriding feeling is excitement, not fear. “Of course, there’ll be moments in Uganda where I feel completely out of my depth. But those will probably be the bits I remember most. I just want to do justice to the story.”
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HeadlineFrom Brixton cafés to Uganda’s national parks: filmmaker crowdfunds conservation documentary
Short HeadlineBrixton filmmaker crowdfunds for Uganda documentary
Standfirst21 year-old Zak is embarking on an ambitious first documentary project to expose malpractice in Uganda's wildlife conservation
A young filmmaker from Brixton is preparing to shoot his first-ever documentary — shining a light on the untold human cost of wildlife conservation in Uganda.
Zak, 21, will travel to Mount Elgon National Park this July to spend six weeks living with an indigenous community displaced by conservation efforts. His self-funded documentary will explore how policies designed to protect wildlife can have devastating effects on the people who have lived on the land for generations.
“It’s my first documentary, and honestly, it’s a bit terrifying,” Zak admitted. “But I feel this is an important story that isn’t being told — and if I don’t do it, who will?”
Zak first encountered the story while researching an essay at university, finding reports by Ugandan journalists about controversial ‘fortress conservation’, which fences off land to protect wildlife but often excludes indigenous communities.
“Indigenous communities are essential to a thriving ecosystem. They interact with the land and are as much a part of it as any plant or animal”.
With no previous filmmaking credits, Zak turned to crowdfunding and grassroots campaigning to raise the £5,400 needed to get the project started. Alongside running a GoFundMe page, he works shifts at two Brixton cafés, where he used everything from QR-code T-shirts to posters to encourage donations.
“It’s tough when you’re new, and you don’t have any content to back you up and prove ‘I can do this’”, Zak said. “But I realised if I could get people to care about the story, they’d want to support it.”
Zak has also enlisted two Ugandan filmmakers to join the project for two weeks, ensuring local perspectives are central to the documentary’s narrative.
He credits his home city for much of his progress. “Brixton, and London as a whole, has been amazing,” he said. “It’s such a connected place — I might not know anyone in the film industry, but I know someone who knows someone. That’s how I ended up with post-production support from a major studio in central London, completely for free.”
Absolute Post, a post-production studio in London, have offered to do all of the post production required for the documentary for free. Zak says this alone is worth about £200,000.
Zak’s determination has caught the attention of industry figures, including Johnny Keeling from the BBC Natural History Unit, and he will attend a storytelling festival in Botswana later this year to network with African filmmakers and distributors.
Despite the scale of the project, Zak says his overriding feeling is excitement, not fear. “Of course, there’ll be moments in Uganda where I feel completely out of my depth. But those will probably be the bits I remember most. I just want to do justice to the story.”
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