I just got back from a screening of Call Me Kuchu, a film about Uganda’s LGTB activist community, at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, MA. I’ve been eager to see this film since I first blogged about it in May 2011, and it lived up to the nearly two years of anticipation.

Boston-area folks: it’s also playing at the Salem Film Fest on March 12, 2013. It’s not available in the States yet, so this might be your only chance to see it for a while.

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Uganda’s State Minister for Ethics and Integrity crashed a private conference for gay rights activists in Entebbe today, announcing, “I have closed this conference because it’s illegal. We do not accept homosexuality in Uganda. So go back home.”

The comments on the Daily Monitor article about the incident are largely in support of the minister, including this logical stunner (emphasis mine):

I applaud the minister!! If homosexual was good why so secretive? Uganda should not allow the evil habit to erode our society. Even animals know better. Thumbs up Uganda

#headdesk, on so many fronts that I’m not going to bother to list them. Among them, as helpfully pointed out by the Monitor:

This comes on the heels of a private members bill recently tabled in Parliament by David Bahati that seeks to punish “aggravated homosexuality,” and proposes the death sentence for someone deemed to be a “serial offender.” Although homosexuality is illegal under the penal code, public assembly of gay persons is not a crime. But that would change once Bahati’s bill is signed into law.

A little more background on why gay rights organizers in Uganda are treading carefully—including the fact that “serial offenders” under the new bill would include those who are not themselves gay but neglect to report two gay friends to the police—is here.

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Earlier this year, I blogged about Call Me Kuchu, a documentary about Uganda’s LGBT community:

Two documentary filmmakers traveled to Uganda last year to help tell the story of Uganda’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community — a community that is besieged by a hostile administration, media, and culture. Their film, Call Me Kuchu (“kuchu” is a slang term for Ugandan LGBTs), centers largely on David Kato, one of Uganda’s most outspoken LGBT activists.

The story behind the film shifted abruptly after Kato was murdered this January. The filmmakers returned to Kampala to document the impact of this loss; the resulting film both celebrates the courage of Kato and the LGBT community and mourns his death.

Filmmakers Katherine Fairfax Wright and Malika Zouhali-Worrall were interviewed for the New York Times in an article published today, the one year anniversary of David’s murder. The article included a highlights from CMK, focused on David’s life and work:

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