HOLIDAY – film preview at AFDA 6th filmfest
The AFDA 6th annual film fest has kicked off, thanks to Aquoibon for the invite to the screening of one of the hot young films – HOLIDAY – this pic makes it look really enticing – here’s the story: Holiday: Neil thinks that he is named after Neil Diamond, only he is not. After his estranged family is killed in a car accident coming back from holiday, Neil travels the streets of …Joburg, where he meets Bianca who helps him appreciate what he has got. Staring: Ricardo Ferreira Producer: Leanne Callanan Director: Benjamin Magowan For more information you can contact Leanne....
SA short film receives international acclaim
A short film made in Cape Town is currently on the program at the Berlin Festival of Art and DIgital Culture. Well done guys – keep on flying the flag!: South African experimental short film “I love you Jet Li” has been selected as part of the official programme for transmediale.06, an international festival for art and digital culture held annually in Berlin. The film, which is… director and producer Jaco Bouwer’s first short, also won Best Experimental Short Film at last year’s Santiago International Short Film Festival. The 11-minute short is an experimental South African Fong Kong love story that explores dysfunctional relationships using multiple layers of narration. According to Bouwer it flies in the face of traditional genre definitions by mixing “documentary, music video and short story formats.” “I love you Jet Li” also challenges traditions in other ways. It was shot digitally in Cape Town on a shoestring budget and features a cast and crew of four. Bouwer is better known as a Fleur de Cap winning director and an actor and dancer. It is actress Dale Dodgen first role and writer Stacy Hardy also makes her film debut. Acclaimed experimental electronic musician Felix Laband composed the...
TSOTSI didn’t get it but you can catch KHALO
Yip – no luck yet again – the Golden Globe for the Best Foreign Language film went to Paradise Now from Palestine… But that’s ok – we made it into the final which is a great feat. Congrats to Gavin, Presley and everyone else involved in the film – you did well guys. The great news is that if the article below got you going, you have a chance to watch Khalo Matabane’s films and… chat to the man himself this Thursday evening at one of our favourite Joburg shops – XARRA books in Newtown. It’s not just a shop, it’s an social and cultural institution. “Story of a Beautiful Country & Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon” 19 Jan 2006 Thurs@18h30 Xarra Books To book you place please email OR call Thobile on 011-832 3069 **************************************************************** 16 Jan 2006 Thanks to RYAN for the heads up on this – Yes people it’s the Golden Globes tonight (well in about 14 hours which would make it in the middle of the night) and if you didn’t know already, TSOTSI has been nominated in the foreign film category. Click here to go the Golden Globes site. The article from the Baltimore Sun sent in by Ryan below is an interview with Khalo Matabane, one of our innovative young film stars whose film fund-raising party you may recall we posted on our site last year. Make sure to read his words for an honest look at the situation in South African society. He shoots straight from the hip – we like straight-shooters. “Khalo Matabane, a filmmaker, talks of what he calls “a funny incident” of his own making at a restaurant in the well-to-do, mostly white Johannesburg neighborhood of Parkhurst. On his way to the restroom, he crossed paths with a white woman he didn’t know. They made eye contact and, he says, he blurted: “I know I am everything you despise – drug dealer, rapist, serial killer. But I’ve changed. The only thing I do now is sell drugs.” It was a provocation, like the best of his low-budget semidocumentary films that show South Africans’ long-lived unease with issues of race, crime and foreigners — films steadily winning favorable attention in South Africa and abroad. Another South African film, Tsotsi, by director Gavin Hood, about six days in the life of a young gangster who might yet win redemption, is a nominee for Best Foreign Language Film at tonight’s Golden Globe Awards. Smiling at the memory of the restaurant encounter, Matabane says his aim was not just to shock but, in his own way, to shake the accepted view that Parkhurst...
MAX and MONA wins an award! Lorelista reviews the scene!
On the weekend that Dv8’s second feature film, MAX and MONA, received its South African mainstream theatrical release through distributor Ster-Kinekor, it also garnered a Best First Time Feature (Prix Oumarou Ganda) award at the FESPACO Film Festival in Ouagadougou – Africa’s premiere Film Festival. This prize goes to the first feature fil…m by a director whose creative efforts are highly remarkable and deserve encouragements. It is worth 2 million CFA francs (US$4 000). Thats about R25000.. nice one! So what’s with this sudden streak of Nodding Heads towards our flieks???? Zola Maseko’s Drum, Yesterday and now Max and Mona – Lorelista gives us her take on WINNER SA movies: Reviewing films is such a subjective craft. I guess the art to following and taking note of reviews is getting to know them and then following the person who wrote it. Ive not found a reviewer yet who I can say thinks like I do. I think we’re getting past the self hatred and I do like that reviewers dont feel beholden to rave and be overly patriotic about South African films. I thought both Jump The Gun and Paljas were both accomplished films and could stand next to anything Ive seen anywhere. Til I saw Yesterday I thought Max & Mona was the best thing to come out of South Africa to date. Funny great story, belly laugh funny. Us laughing at ourselves. Loved it in both the audience way and the industry person way. Thought Yesterday was beyond superb, evocative, cinematic poetry, non judgemental, dont know why everyone complained about AIDS message/non message, and to think after reading everything I had heard about it – I almost didnt watch it, I was even less interested in watching it than Forgiveness, which I thought was a contrived messy piece of work with Arnold Vosloo deep to the point of emotional blank, thought they surely couldnt have got worse. As for Yesterday – I saw it and thought “We’ve...
Review: Salad at Quintessence in Melville – yuk
Women’s day called for a late lunch and with the beautiful Joburg sun creating a late afternoon glow through the air, we decided a pavement restaurant was the only option. “Put it this way, if we had thrown the old lettuce left in the fridge drawer for two weeks onto a plate and eaten it, it would probably have had more flavour” In Joburg there are several ‘villagey’ suburbs w…here groovy restaurants and terraces spill onto the road, each with their own vibe and spirit. Parkhurst is probably the most bleached and squeaky clean of the bunch, sometimes bordering on sterile. If you like Biggie Best meets Granny’s attic with a dark naughty side at night, it’s for you. As a friend said on a recent lunch in Parkhurst “where are all the darkies?” Greenside has a more upmarket and visionary culinary feel to it, with top end restaurants, a very relaxed and mixed after-work crowd. Many of the restaurants have ‘sittings’, which means that you can only eat during certain ‘meal’ times. Then of course there’s Melville, land of hippy’s, the media crowd and pavements sellers… you just can’t beat Melville for it’s laid back, integrated, multi-cultural buzz… Celebs, shlebs, locals, tourists all mashed together in one of the many tempting cafes and restaurants. It changes all the time with restaurants closing and being replaced with lofty names like ‘Serendipity’ (watch out you’re next for a review!) that you can tell the owner got straight from dictionary.com. We vote Melville as number one for the sheer People Viewing Factor – it’s hard to beat and you will be thoroughly entertained. Anyway, back to the Review, we needed something healthy and had had our eye on the classy QUINTESSENCE which in essence (hee hee) is a deli with mouth-watering food on offer. So we ordered our ‘Quintessence salad’, which was supposed to consist of strips of chicken and bacon on a salad with croutons. It was R32 and at that price it was an utter dissapointment. Maybe the problem is that we compare all salads to those adventures served at Primi Piatti in Rosebank – but come on people! The salad(s) consisted of a scant base of tired and threadbare iceberg lettuce (ugh) lightly sprinkled with a few shards of Bacon and Chicken with a few soggy croutons thrown in. The salad was tiny, badly presented and BLAND BLAND BLAND. Put it this way, if we had thrown the old lettuce left in the fridge drawer for two weeks onto a plate and eaten it, it would probably have had more flavour. We don’t mean to be nasty but...
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