Imagine you are President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, receiving a telegram from Uganda's General Idi Amin Dada that reads as follows: "I want to assure you that I love you very much and if you had been a woman I would have considered marrying you although your head is full of gray hairs. But as you are a man that possibility does not arise."

Now imagine you are filmmaker Barbet Schroeder. You have included this exchange in your amazing 1974 documentary, General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait, but now the sociopathic subject of your film would like you to cut those 67 seconds because "this telegram was actually an insult and General Amin Dada does not wish to revive hostilities with a neighboring country." While he's at it, he'd like you to make two other cuts. To persuade you, he's rounded up 150 French nationals living in Uganda and given them your telephone number so they can call you and urge you to comply. If you don't, there's likely to be another power shortage while the crocodiles struggle to devour the corpses of the 150 people. Often, when supply exceeds the crocs' demand, body parts catch in the turbines of the dam, causing outtages.

Schroeder complied with the General's demands, exhibiting the edited film with this disclaimer: "This has now become a film by Idi Amin Dada, with Barbet Schroeder as an assistant." Once Amin Dada was deposed, he restored the cut footage.

Post-colonial Africa has known no shortage of mad despots, but the disarmingly innocent Amin Dada is in a class by himself. This documentary is an absolutely fascinating portrait of the charming tyrant, one that had the Fesser [who brought the doc home] exclaiming over and over again, "This is the most fucked-up movie ever." True. But, to use the phrase the General himself prefaced his remarks with again and again, "I think you should know this."

It's also the most beautifully shot petard the cinetrix has ever seen. An essay by David Ehrenstein that accompanies the Criterion DVD poses the pivotal question:



Can a film contradict itself by the very process of its making? That’s the amusing paradox of Idi Amin Dada. While he didn’t propose the documentary, it’s likely that the outwardly pleasant yet deeply psychotic dictator was expecting a modestly scaled retread of Triumph of the Will. Leni Riefenstahl’s documentary of the 1934 Nazi party rally was expressly designed to deify Adolf Hitler, treating the mass murderer and his followers like mythic demigods. The result was one of the most fearsome, and effective, propaganda films of all time. Riefenstahl, of course, has insisted that the film was nothing more than a straightforward documentary, and that it couldn’t possibly have been imbued with Nazi propaganda—after all, it had no narration. Idi Amin Dada does have several passages of narration, but it’s hardly propaganda. If Amin, an enthusiastic Hitler admirer, thought that Schroeder would be his Riefenstahl, he was very much mistaken. For while the cameras record his every move at carefully staged rallies and public events chosen expressly by the “President for Life,” the aura is not at all worshipful. Schroeder, fascinated by the dictator, allows Amin a large degree of free reign in the film, even letting him take credit for the film’s music (Amin loves to play the accordion), but his fascination doesn’t eclipse his authority as a filmmaker. The off-screen commentary, rather than reinforcing the dictator’s declarations, ceaselessly undercuts them. Schroeder always makes sure to disclose the exact nature of what we’re seeing at any given moment. Sequences of public adulation, intended to appear spontaneous, are always identified as complete artifices.

So, thrill to the performances of the Suicide Revolutionary Jazz Band, captured on film at a state function. Marvel to the surrealistic sight of Amin Dada himself on the squeezebox. Laugh as he slags off Henry Kissinger as a coward. And wonder at his whimsical telegrams to world leaders. Just never forget that you are looking at the charismatic face of evil. And to recognize it, you must not look away.