Movie buffs – FREE Spanish film festival!
Now we know how hard (and expensive) it is to get that first film off the ground, so do yourselves a favour all aspirational movie-makers – take a break and grab your neglected friends and loved ones and treat yourselves to some muchos grande Spanish flieks – they’re free! The Spanish film industry experienced a boom this year thanks to the international success of The Sea Inside… (Mar Adentro) which received an Oscar as Best Foreign Language Film. Now South African film fans have the chance to see some of the best award-winning films Spain produced at this year’s Spanish Film Festival at Cinema Nouveau screened by Jameson. Best news of all is that attendance is free. The films include the Cannes Film Festival winner The Hours of the Day; the hilarious comedy Torremolinos 73 and the Spanish Civil War drama Soldados de Ssalamina. The Spanish Film festival dates are: 7-13 October – Pretoria – Cinema Nouveau Brooklyn Mall from 14-20 October – Johannesburg – Cinema Nouveau Rosebank Mall 28 October – 3 Nov – Cape Town – Cinema Nouveau V&A Waterfront 11-17 November – Durban – Cinema Nouveau Gateway There are six films in the festival with screenings each week at 11.30am, 2.15pm, 5.15pm and 7.45pm. The programme is subject to change. Tickets may be bought at participating cinemas’ box offices, through TicketLine 082 16789 or at THE STER KINEKOR WEBSITE....
Cape Town WORLD Cinema Festival and SITHENGI 2005
If you’ve got a movie and you need a deal, get to Sithengi and hang out with the industry – we hear it has it’s ups and downs – this year looks to be blinger than most with a fine line-up of African and other films on show – check it out. The 4th Cape Town World Cinema Festival (CTWCF) takes place in and around Cape Town from the 11th to th…e 20th November and marks the 10th Anniversary of its business component, the Sithengi Film and TV Market, 15 -18 November. The CTWCF is the only film and television event of its kind in Africa. This year the CTWCF is bigger than ever before and will showcase over 110 feature films, shorts and documentaries and will be screened at a variety of venues from Artscape Theatre Centre, Cinema Nouveau at the V&A Waterfront; V&A Amphitheatre and the Labia Theatre on Orange to Cinemax in Mitchell’s Plain, the Kismet in Athlone and the FAWU Hall in Gugulethu and the Zolani Multi-purpose Hall in Nyanga. ‘The 2005 Festival will be completely different to last year,’ says CEO & Festival Director Michael Auret. ‘It is my objective to increase audience participation in the Festival and grow audiences for film. For instance we have included Leon Schuster’s latest slapstick comedy Mama Jack. If by doing this more people look at the programme and go to other films, then we will have achieved something.” This year’s festival will cater for the entire international spectrum of taste and culture that is encapsulated in Cape Town. Latest films by iconic directors such as Lars von Trier, Ousmane Sembene, Wong Kar-Wai and David Cronenberg complement an African Retrospective to mark the 10th anniversary of the Sithengi Film & TV Market as well as 50 years of African Cinema. But there is even more, with focuses on Cuba and also Argentina. South African highlights include Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi, Khalo Matabane’s Conversations of a Sunday Afternoon, Kevin de Toit’s Tau ya Soweto and Darrel Roodt’s much anticipated Faith’s Corner. And, says Michael Auret, the bright lights, fashion and spectacle will be in full swing too! ‘The bling and glamour of the Oscars is reflected in the 2 daily Red Carpet Screenings of the movies that are in contention for the Annual Awards. These are held at 18h00 and 20h00 at Artscape and, yes there actually is a red carpet, and flashing cameras and screaming fans! This culminates in the Gala Awards night on the 19th of November. So, if high-fashion and celebrity is your thing, Artscape is where you want to be on the evenings of the 12th...
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...
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