Uganda Arts News: United States Exhibition highlights the northern Uganda war

Ultimate Media

Henry Bongyerirwe, a Makerere University Lecturer will next week join two Americans in an exhibition to highlight the plight of the people in northern Uganda at Arizona State University's Tempe campus.

The U.S. Embassy funded the project by Bongyereirwe and two American photojournalists, Vanessa Vick and Rick D'Elia, a Fountain Hills photographer.

D'Elia also is a photojournalism instructor at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix says that with a war in Iraq and Afghanistan capturing the headlines and a conflict raging in Darfur, the media has paid little attention to the war in northern Uganda.

D'Elia, who lived in Uganda from September 2003 to August 2004, says he met people in northern Uganda and that his exhibition is to make other people to care about them.

He claims he was in an area two days after a massacre claimed more than 200 lives when many huts were burned with people still inside and saw bodies lying around in the dirt, although much had been cleaned up.

D'Elia describes the Internally Displaced Peoples camps as basically slums, which he says are often more dangerous. He says that they want to document the faces of the conflict but also lighter moments, such as a picture of a boy flying a kite, adding that they have tried to make sure it wasn't just all bloody, nasty war pictures.

According to the Arizona Republic publications, the exhibit includes 51 photos will open at 6 p.m. to allow time to view the photos, and at 7 p.m., the screening of Uganda Rising will begin to provide further context.

Jesse James Miller, the film's co-director and editor says the film shows the historical elements of some of the reasons for the conflict that go beyond colonialism.

Actor Kevin Spacey has signed on to do a narration of the 83-minute film, but it won't be ready in time for this screening. A shorter form of the film with Spacey's narration will run on the Discovery Times cable channel on a future date, according to the Arizona Republic.

The Lord's Resistance Army and the Ugandan government signed a truce in August, but both sides accused the other of violating it. A new agreement was signed this week.