Here:

RangeFilter is used to specify a value of the two ends without specifying the other. It works by looking for "min/after" and "max/before" in the query param.

This should work:

Using DateFromToRangeFilter, defined this way:

last_updated = DateFromToRangeFilter()

and passing the filter:
filters[last_updated_after]=2016-01-01

will execute: .filter(last_updated__gte="2016-01-01")

Currently it fails as last_updated_after != last_updated (as in the quoted code: base_filters contains last_updated but not last_updated_after or last_updated_before)