A story that stays in the hearts of audiences
MASEGO PANYANE
THE MARK of a good storyteller is the ability to tell authentic tales that reflect the rich and unique nature of their subject.
Enter Sara Blecher. With years of filmmaking experience under her belt, she has over the years refined her storytelling such that it transports the viewer to the heart of the story.
Whether she’s telling the story of an Afrikaans family in a film like Dis ek, Anna, or exploring young black masculinities in Otelo Burning, she understands fully that we are a complex, yet intriguing people. Her latest work, Mayfair, is no exception.
Set in the predominantly Indian-muslim community that lies west of the Joburg city centre, we follow a young doctor and prodigal son, Zaid Randera (Ronak Patani), who is fired from his job at a refugee camp and returns home to Mayfair in Johannesburg, where his overbearing father, Aziz (Rajesh Gopie), a businessman and occasional money launderer, is facing death threats.
Zaid finds that everything at home has changed. The old neighbourhood is full of new immigrants with different ways of doing things. His father is in over his head as a result of a soured deal with ruthless Somalis.
Zaid remains reluctant to become involved, but when Faiza, his baby sister, is kidnapped after a failed cash drop to resolve the Somali deal, Zaid must decide how far he is prepared to go to protect his family.
Chatting to Blecher about the film, she tells me a story that’s a mixture of kismet and happenstance, of how it came into being.
“Mayfair literally found me, in that there were these two young finance guys of Indianmuslim descent and they came to me with the project. They said ‘we’ve got this really interesting film’, they’d seen Otelo Burning and liked it, and they were like, ‘will you help us get it made?’ So quite literally, the project found me,” Blecher said.
This was some seven odd years ago. And as with any other film being made in Mzansi, funding was one of the stumbling blocks they faced en route to making the film a reality.
The primary concern for the collective, however, was ensuring that the story was strong enough to stay in the hearts of audiences.
“We worked quite long on the script. So developing the story, and getting the script nailed, that did take long.
“But once that was finalised, the issue then became how do we source the funding Contrary to the many predictions that Twitterville has made about what genre Idols’ contestant Yanga Sobetwa will follow, suggesting that she should follow in the footsteps of Zahara and Amanda Black, the 16-year-old wants to be a gospel singer. to ensure that the script comes to life,” she explained. One of the things that makes Blecher’s storytelling stand out is how nuanced it is. In Mayfair, themes such as crime in South Africa, the relationship between South Africans and immigrants living in the country, masculinity, the boundaries of tradition and legality, the positioning of women in traditionally patriarchal societies are all done in a layered yet unobtrusive manner.
What was particularly appealing to me was that the depiction of violence in the film is less guts and gore, more thought-through and thrilling, something I attributed to having a director of her calibre, who also happens to be female.
“I think that’s why it’s important to have women doing these types of genre films. We do bring a different perspective to these types of films,” said Blecher.
“It is, however, not a black and white issue. You can’t say ‘oh, because a woman is directing this film, it will be 1, 2, 3’. It all exists on some kind of spectrum.
“I think, for instance, that men are interested in the physical violence and women more the impact of said violence,” she said.
Asked what she hoped the film does for the viewer, she said: “I hope the movie takes people into a world that’s literally down the road from them, but they’ve never been into.
“So many of my films and what I’m interested in is literally about Johannesburg. It’s so fascinating to get an insight into the culture and life of Mayfair,” she said.
■ Mayfair opened yesterday in cinemas nationwide.