A festival of the factual
Fascinating documentaries to be screened in and around Cape Town and Johannesburg
IF YOU were around in the 1960s in the Mother City, you may remember the Catacombs nightclub. But then maybe not. The club, in what was the “red light” district of Cape Town, at the bottom end of Bree Street, attracted the “sugar girls”, the sailors, people across the colour line, gay men and women, and transsexuals.
Astonishingly, at the height of apartheid, anything seemed to go in this exotic underworld of a place. Billy Monk was the bouncer but also an astute and highly perceptive photographer, who captured many of the scenes of the secret world of the women of easy virtue, the seamen and also of a joy that seemed to have no bounds.
As the curator of his remarkable legacy of work, film-maker Craig Cameron-Mackintosh has crafted a documentary film titled Billy Monk: A Shot in the Dark that offers an engaging portrait of what went on at the club.
It’s just one of a host of fascinating doccies that are being screened at the 21st Encounters Documentary Festival, showing in and around Cape Town and Johannesburg, until June 16.
Using only archival photographs and fabulously composed contemporary interviews, CameronMackintosh provides a fascinating portrait of Monk, bringing together the key characters of his compelling story. Watching it, it’s amazing to think that, at a time when apartheid forbade the mixing of different races, Monk’s pictures of love, desire and intimacy, across the colour bar, existed in stark contrast to the official order put in place by the then National Party government.
Through painstaking work of identifying faces of some who frequented the club, along with some of those who entertained the habitues, the director managed to get hold of some of the coloured jazz players and a singer.
Zelda Benjamin, today 78, was one of the crooners, who took the mic and sang in the evenings. CameronMackintosh says that she lived in District Six and was forcibly removed. Willie van Blumenstein performed there and so did Gary Kriel, a bassist and, still going strong, is Maurice Gawronsky, who’s on the drums every Sunday at the Winchester Mansions’ Sunday jazz brunches.
Cameron-Mackintosh says an enormous part of the process of putting the documentary together was the research from the footage.
As an artist, writer and first-time film-maker, his doccie Billy Monk
– Shot in the Dark certainly pays homage to the late Monk and his extraordinarily evocative black and white photographs, in what is an intimate and stylised snapshot of a bygone era.
The film screens at the Labia, on June 9, at 5.30pm, with a question and answer session, and again at the Labia, on June 12, at 8.30pm.
Among the many other films to look out for is OR Tambo: The Jewel in our Crown, produced by son Dali Tambo.
This wide-ranging documentary, about the life of the much revered ANC leader, blends a wealth of archival footage with interviews of contemporary key political figures.
It follows Tambo from his early experiences at Fort Hare University to his role as president of the ANC in exile, eventually setting up the negotiations in Lusaka for a free South Africa.
While his personal life is delved into, particularly his enduring relationship with his wife Adelaide, the key focus is on the “architect of our freedom”.
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