Different takes at Africa’s Cannes
The Durban International Film Festival provides an important stage for the growing local film industry, writes Shelley Seid
IT has been 34 years since Ros and Teddy Sarkin decided to start a festival to give Durban people the opportunity to view a cross-section of the movies that were banned in apartheid’s heyday— European drama, political masterpieces, provocative, experimental cinema. It became a highlight on Durban’s cultural calendar and of significance to those who yearned for a taste of cultural freedom.
Writer and arts activist Peter Machen, who this year assumed the position of manager of the Durban International Film Festival, remembered the first one he attended. “I grew up in Hillcrest in the 1980s with no access to anything alternative. In 1989, as a first-year student at the University of Natal, I attended the festival. It was a conduit into another reality; the whole world suddenly opened up to me.”
It was a similar experience for many in the audience. In the festival’s apartheid period, debates would rage in the hospitality tent outside the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre (the home of the screenings), and attending four or five screenings a day was not unusual.
The end of apartheid meant an end to censorship, but the need for the festival did not diminish. Cultural freedom aside, there was — and is — still little opportunity to see alternative cinema on the big screen.
At the same time, the festival — since 1999 under the auspices of the Centre for the Creative Arts at the University of KwaZulu-Natal — slowly changed direction with additions such as niche mini festivals like the popular Wavescapes, a surf film festival that has been running since 2005. It is a stage for the growing local film industry and a drawcard for international stakeholders to view and buy South African productions — a festival many are calling the Cannes of Africa.
In 1979, the year in which the festival was inaugurated, seven movies were screened at the black-owned Avalon cinema. This year, the 34th Durban International Film Festival, which opens on Thursday, offers more than 250 screenings — 72 feature films, 48 documentaries and 45 short films — at 11 venues across the city.
The focus, as usual, will be on South African films (12 feature films, 16 documentaries and a host of short films). Most will have their South African, if not world, premieres.
Over the past few years, Machen has noticed a definite shift in South African productions. “They are moving beyond the worthy, the politically correct, and finding a greater freedom of artistic expression. I think filmmakers have stopped toeing a particular line.”
This year’s opening film is Jahmil XT Qubeka’s Of Good Report, the story of a serial killer obsessed with beautiful
I want to deal with the human struggle rather than the armed struggle
young girls. Filmmaker Andrew Worsdale, who created the award-winning cult hit Shot Down during South Africa’s third state of emergency circa 1986-87, has written and directed his second feature film, Durban Poison.
It is inspired by the true story of Charmaine Phillips and Piet Grundlingh, who went on a murder and robbery spree in the mid-1980s. She was 19; he was in his mid-30s. They shot four people and their subsequent trial caught the imagination of South Africa. He was hanged and she spent 20 years in jail.
Worsdale wrote the script at the end of the ’80s. More than 20 years later, he has eventually been able to create his movie — the first South African film in the “road movie” genre. It goes one better: the lead detective and prisoners “Jolene” and “Piet” return to the scene of the crimes to understand what actually took place — in other words, said Worsdale, “a road movie within a road movie”.
It is gritty, fast-paced and skilfully filmed, beautifully wrapped in an outstanding soundtrack. I was not sold on the final plot twist, but this quibble could not detract from its authenticity and the mesmerising performances of lead actors Brandon Auret and Cara Roberts.
It is all the more laudable knowing that this is 23-year-old Roberts’s first screen role. She is the daughter of Michelle Botes — best known for her former Isidingo role as the villainous Cherel — and actor Ian Roberts, who directed and stars in the comedy Everyman’s Taxi, also at the festival. Roberts said she “became stuck in Jolene’s world — I understood her and empathised with her; I found her anger. Often at the end of the day, it was hard to get out of character. It was scary.”
Roberts talks of the shift in local film: “So many films are about apartheid, and it was a big thing for me that this was about a woman trying to get her own back. It’s refreshing to have a different take on the issues that face us in South Africa.”
Zwelethu Radebe, 24, has also been exploring a different South Africa. His short film, The Hajji, is based on Ahmed Essop’s short story of the same name. “I got a lot of raised eyebrows as a black Christian youth telling the story of a Muslim in the 1980s,” he said, “but the story with its themes of guilt, redemption and second chances resonated with me.”
Radebe is fascinated by our past. “But,” he said, “I want to deal with the human struggle rather than the armed struggle — with character conflict rather than political conflict.”
African Gothic is an adaptation of Reza de Wet’s awardwinning Afrikaans play Diepe Grond . Directed by American Gabriel Bologna and written and produced by the South African-born Damon Shalit, who also plays the lead, it is a dark, intense, disturbing story — one of murky, ugly secrets played out in fantasy and sexual games between a pair of siblings, Frikkie and Sussie. Literary translations can be problematic, and African Gothic does work better in its original Afrikaans. However, it is a brave film, with inspiring cinematography and excellent performances from the lovers.
Other potential highlights include Roberta Durrant’s Felix , about 14-year-old Felix Xaba, who dreams of becoming a saxophonist, and the short film Kanye Kanye (The Line), written and directed by Afda fourthyear student Miklas Manneke, which was selected as the South African entrant for the Student Academy Awards and won an award for best cinematography at this year’s New York City Picture Start Film Festival. It is a story about forbidden love and the absurdity of prejudice.
For more information, see durbanfilmfest.co.za