RAMPING IT UP
STYLE COPS STRIKE
IT’S three decades old and doesn’t have any dabbing, but the musical Asinamali! is likely to resonate with the youth when the movie version is released next year.
Mbongeni Ngema, who wrote the play in 1983 and will star in the movie currently being shot in Soweto, says the recent student uprisings bear similarities to the liberation protests of the apartheid era that feature in his play.
“Last year students rose up, one more time, and as a matter of fact, they used the title of the play on their banners — #FeesMustFall #Asinamali — and it so happened that during that time, I was in pre-production for the movie,” he told the Sunday Times this week.
“I think it’s the right time because 22 years after liberation, things have not really changed. People are still poor, people are still living in shacks and students are complaining, ‘Where is free education?’
“It may be a different kind of struggle, but it’s mainly our young people who are aspiring to make it in life. I think it tells the young people that because you come from abject poverty, does not mean you cannot make it,” Ngema said.
Asinamali! — which means “we don’t have money” in Zulu — is based on the true stories of inmates in the Lamontville prison in KwaZulu-Natal. It is set in the early ’80s, when apartheid was firmly entrenched.
First staged in 1985, the play received a hostile reception from the government, and a number of actors were arrested during raids that took place during performances.
But it placed Ngema in the international spotlight and garnered him a nomination for the Tony Awards.
While danger, fear and intimidation characterised the era in which the musical was first performed, the atmosphere on the set of the upcoming film is jovial.
This week a scene was being shot in an old building in Dobsonville, Soweto, which had been made over to look like an old-school jive bar.
Fluorescent lights in red, orange and green lit up the set, complementing the brightly coloured outfits of the cast. Patterned jumpsuits, mixed with colourful berets and newsboy hats, helped create the theme of old-meets-new.
The story, which predominantly takes place in prison, has cutaways of the happier life outside jail.
The scene being shot when the Sunday Times visited the set was a flashback in which the main female lead, Soweto, played by actress and dancer Danica de la Rey, speaks of freedom and fighting oppression through art rather than weapons.
While discussing the possibility of fleeing into exile in Mozambique, she performs a song which turns into a dance scene, culminating in powerful chants of the words “freedom” and “Soweto”, with fists of black conscious solidarity raised in the air.
The energy between shots is electric, with dancers and actors barely breaking character, dancing and laughing.
The new film stars a mix of known and unknown faces. Ngema takes the lead role as Comrade Washington, and is also co-director with his Sarafina! colleague Darrell Roodt.
The film also stars Soul City’s Mfana Hlophe, Sarafina! actors Tertius Meintjes and Seipati Sothoane and Zone 14’s Kere Nyawo, among others.
“There is something very beautiful about unlocking Mbongeni and watching him work,” said Roodt.
Asinamali! was a “beautiful relic”, he said.
“Yes, it could be seen as a museum piece, but it’s a living museum piece and it’s so cool watching Mbongeni make this film and how he’s interpreting the past, now with hindsight.”
Ngema beams when he speaks of the film, saying Asinamali! was the first production to win him international recognition. As such, it “deserves to be monumentalised”.
He added: “This was my first Broadway production before I did Sarafina! — the production that really made my career.”
Filming began on August 8 and would be in the post-production phase by October, with plans to take it to the Cannes Film Festival next May “and then the rest of the world”, said Ngema.
“The country has been crying out for another production like Sarafina!. We never had a film like that and here it is now, and fortunately, by the same person.”
The country has been crying out for another production like ‘Sarafina!’. Here it is, fortunately by the same person