Général Idi Amin Dada: Autoportrait

Director Barbet Schroeder's 1974 documentary GENERAL IDI AMIN DADA [A SELF PORTRAIT] may be the ultimate realization of the phrase 'give 'em enough rope.' Schroeder just turns the camera on and lets Amin dictate the itinerary. In addition to endless parades involving his obviously strapped-for-resources military (one sequence finds paratroopers training with a metal playground slide while onlookers laugh uproariously), we also catch the dictator trying to (literally) talk to the animals; exhorting his government ministers to be more masculine; lecturing the hospitals' doctors on the importance of not being drunk; informing the male leader of Tanzania that he would happily marry him if his hair wasn't gray and he had the right parts; and referencing his sexual marksmanship as it applies to the gender of his children. All of this would be easy enough to laugh off if he didn't also engage in off-the-cuff anti-semitism; order public executions of dissidents; post letters to the United Nations saying that Hitler didn't go far enough; and ultimately lead an estimated 300,000 Ugandans to their death. Amin presents himself as the jolly manifestation of evil; an affable megalomaniac who jostled his way onto the world stage and left his nation in blood-soaked tatters.