Film-school dropout now red-carpet regular
FILM school dropout Dan Mace is “stoked” to have won two Silver Screens at the Young Director Awards at the recent Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Mace was the only African to receive an award. He bagged one in the short film category for his film Gift and one in the “changing the world frame by frame” category for Mine Sniffing Rats.
“Film school wasn’t for me. I found that they just put film into a box and you had to stick to all these guidelines,” he said.
That is when the Capetonian turned to making his own films and putting them online and on YouTube.
His channel, DantheDirector, has had close on two million views and has more than 61 000 subscribers. Both his winning films were originally featured on the channel.
Mace beat out more than 400 other aspirant directors after a production company that manages him suggested he enter.
“I didn’t think much of it at first, but then a month later I got an e-mail saying I need to jump on a plane and get to France as I have three films nominated for the awards,” he said.
Mace said it was a “great feeling” to be acknowledged for his work. “The standard was so high that I didn’t know if I would place anywhere.”
He had the idea for Gift when he saw a young man dancing for money at a traffic light in Johannesburg. Struck by how the busker moved with rhythm in the absence of music, Mace decided to create SEEING THE LIGHT: Dan Mace says film school wasn’t for him because of the rigid guidelines a back story of a street dancer and “how he rules his dance and rhythm through the sounds of his fears”.
Mace is no stranger to telling human stories, having previously done a film on Lufefe Nomjana, better known as The Spinach King.
The young director met the entrepreneur four years ago at the Raymond Ackerman Academy of Entrepreneurial Development when Nomjana was at the start of his career. In search of film material, Mace would watch the students pitch their business ideas, offering the ones he believed in a free film to help “get their ideas out there”.
Drawn to Nomjana’s idea of healthy eating in the townships, Mace shot a short film of the Khayelitsha resident, with the story eventually being picked up for TV and shared over the web. Today, Nomjana is the owner of Espinaca Innovations, a bakery that sells healthy breads and pastries.
“This is just the beginning . . . for me as a director, and I hope to expand from YouTube and to be able to speak to larger audiences in the near future,” said Mace.