Gqeberha sci-fi movie in world film festival
New sci-fi movie ‘Glasshouse’ boasts top UK and South African actors, but the biggest star of the film is an Eastern Cape conservatory made almost entirely of glass. Barbara Hollands spoke to the two filmmakers
A dystopian South African sci-fi movie filmed in a historical Victorian conservatory in Gqerbeha has been selected for the 25th Fantasia International Film Festival in August, in Canada.
Glasshouse is due for release on DStv’s BoxOffice in October and will be streamed on Showmax from February 2022.
Fantasia described the existential film as sensual and savage, saying it has notes of folk horror and perverse, brooding, Gothic melodrama.
Co-writer and associate producer Emma Lungiswa de Wet, who grew up in Makhanda where she studied at Victoria Girl’s High and Rhodes University, says the story is shaped around the magnificent Pearson Conservatory.
“Pearson’s is the last Victorian conservatory still standing in South Africa.
“It was a pretty daring move writing a script for a location we hadn’t yet secured, but it couldn’t have been anywhere else.
“In fact, it may have been a somewhat sneaky move on my behalf to write a script I knew could only be shot in my home province.”
Thanks to Nelson Mandela Bay Tourism and the municipality, the shoot was granted six weeks in the St George’s Park plant conservatory, which was built in 1882 and features ornamental columns, scroll work and a central fountain imported from the UK.
In exchange, the movie, which was produced by Greig Buckle, employed more than 50% of its crew locally, providing employment and professional experience in the industry.
The 94-minute film, which was co-written by Kelsey Egan, who also directed it, is a dark, postapocalyptic fable about family survival in an airtight glasshouse following an airborne dementia called The Shred, which has left behind roaming humans unable to remember who they are.
The irony of filming a movie about airborne disease during a global epidemic was not lost on the team, who shot it in a bubble. “It was surreal,” says Egan.
“The film is both intimate and claustrophobic, and our experience of filming was the same, all the more so since we were so tightly bubbled.
“None of that felt like a bad thing though; it felt more like a gift.
“We were incredibly grateful to be in production despite the challenges posed by Covid-19, and it was an honour to be able to channel all the pent-up energy from lockdown into telling a story that resonated even more deeply due to the shared global experience of the pandemic.”
De Wet describes the shoot at the end of 2020 as a “life-imitating-art experience”.
“Gqeberha had one of the highest rates of infection in the country during the shoot, so there was a lot of pressure to keep cast and crew protected and to ensure a safe set.
“We had a Covid officer present at all times, and we tested and isolated immediately if anyone showed symptoms.
“We were unbelievably lucky that we made it through our shoot without a single infection — if we’d had an outbreak, we would have had to shut down, and would not have been able to finish on schedule.”
The cast includes British actress Jessica Alexander (who is in the upcoming remake of The Little Mermaid) and Anja Taljaard as sisters Bee and Evie Hilton Pelser, who starred in the Bafta-nominated Moffie, as well as Brent Vermeulen, Adrienne Pearce and Kitty Harris.
As other South African films have done, the decision to cast an international talent in a starring role achieves more than just a wellhoned performance; it is also about attracting a global audience.
“The bankability of a cast massively impacts sales, and one of the most effective ways to uplevel the perceived value of local talent in the eyes of international buyers is to provide them with the opportunity to star opposite international talent,” explains Egan, who helped adapt Deon Meyer’s best-seller Trackers for M-Net, Cinemax and ZDF.
De Wet was a staff writer on YouTube’s animated phenomenon Munki and Trunk following a scriptwriting masters from The Central School in London.
The Pearson conservatory enchanted her as a child: “It was an ethereal wreck before its restoration.
“It felt like The Secret Garden to me — like the fairytales on my bookshelf come to life.
“But all fairytales have dark roots. My classmates and I went to schools named after monarchs and murderers: our monuments are far from neutral.
“This conservatory was brought out from Victorian England to cultivate exotic plants not indigenous to African soil.
“It’s a relic of British rule, as fragile as memory itself. But it has gradually become absorbed into the South African metropolis that grew around it.”
For this reason, the monument was the perfect setting for a story about the fragility and unreliability of memory, which is nevertheless central to our identity.
“While the film isn’t overtly political, it functions much like the gothic plays of Reza de Wet — my playwriting mentor — as a fable about white South African nostalgia and forgetting,” says De Wet.
“It’s a memory-impairment that leaves us oblivious to our actions and inheritance: in asking for amnesty, we are really asking for amnesia.
“But trauma is never really forgotten, and the truth buried in the garden, or obscured through the dirty glass, will always resurface.”
Filming in a glass monument meant the 50person crew had to tread lightly.
“We were a small crew, and very conscious of the delicate environment in which we were shooting.
“Our production designer, the brilliant Kerry von Lillienfeld, designed our set dressings to be very gentle on the location — all set dressing paints were removable and non-toxic, so as not to harm the plants.
“By way of showing our appreciation for the support we’d received, we donated plants, had the conservatory professionally cleaned, and had fountains repaired, with the aim of leaving this precious monument even more beautiful than when we found it,” says De Wet.
Egan, who will be directing another two sci-fi films for Showmax, says the genre has always captured the imagination, but is even more relevant now. “Many of the moral arguments and challenging ideas posed by science fiction have become real-world concerns. Scifi is prescient, and in many ways we are currently experiencing a version of the future that science fiction has predicted.
“The news that Glasshouse has been chosen for the line-up at an international film festival is a privilege,” she says.
“Fantasia is an incredible festival. The festival will be virtual due to Covid-19 but I’ve been invited to participate in a Zoom panel discussion on the new wave of South African genre filmmaking with a great bunch of South African filmmakers. That’ll be quite fun.”
De Wet is upbeat about her home province and as a moviemaking location.
“The Eastern Cape is a province with varied, impressive locations and a wealth of untapped creative human capital.
“We are passionate about creating opportunities for these skills to thrive.”