Among the midnight neck nibblers and offbeat cult classics will be movie stars and celebrity directors. Fabius Burger reports on the new South African International Film Festival
It’s easy to see that the new South African International Film Festival next month is happening post- election. Among famed directors who will be appearing, introducing their films and hosting workshops and seminars, are Marcel Ophuls, Melvin van Peebles and Claude Berri — and more names of major directors and actors are being confirmed every week.
Keeping what the WM&G Film Festival did best, and chucking out the rest, the new festival this year will offer — along with celebrity directors and stars — cutting edge, controversial films, all shown in standard — indeed, luxurious — cinema complexes.
The festival, organised with the support of Ster-Kinekor (among others), runs from September 29 to October 16, and is now a project of the South African Film Foundation, established earlier this year. This non-profit umbrella body promotes and protects the independent film sector. The Weekly Mail & Guardian is still a major sponsor, if one of many, and its short film competition continues as usual. The festival also appears under the banner of Arts Alive.
The films will be lively, including premieres of Quentin Tarantino’s much-discussed, violent gangster movie, Pulp Fiction — winner of the Best Film at this year’s Cannes Film Festival — John Waters’ high camp Serial Mom with Kathleen Turner as an endearing urban slasher, and independent American films like Amateur with the French movie star Isabelle Huppert as a pornography-writing ex-nun.
But that’s the stuff of festivals. There’s also a Caribbean transvestite serial killer running around Paris in Claire Denis’ I Can’t Sleep, and an examination of serial killers’ minds in Ian Kerkhof’s 10 Monologues from the Lives of the Serial Killers that won Best Film at the Potsdam Film Festival.
Nazi skinheads go on the rampage in the Australian movie, Romper Stomper, a film that caused hefty debates about violence overseas. New Zealand director Lee Tamahori’s highly praised gritty look at sexual abuse in a marriage, Once Were Warriors, will also be shown.
While these films may be controversial, the range of festival films is broad, and includes Wim Wenders’ Faraway, So Close, the sequel to Wings of Desire, the charming Raining Stones, Ken Loach’s film about a Catholic father who wants to buy his daughter a confirmation dress, and Mrs Parker and her Vicious Circle, about the writer Dorothy Parker and the famed witty revels at the Algonquin Hotel. The full festival programme will appear in the WM&G on September 16.
“This festival will be the best ever,” says Liza Key, a director of the foundation and organiser of the festival. The list of celebrities and stars has not been finalised, but “interest overseas is great”.
Van Peebles, known as the Godfather of Black Cinema, whatever that implies, will show his banned masterpiece Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song, a very rude movie about police and black pimps, and his erotic short film Vroom about women and motorbikes.
Berri will introduce his Germinal, a working class epic based on Emile Zola’s classic novel, with Gerard Depardieu.
If news of the yearly film festival made you tense with apprehension — theatres doubling up badly as cinemas, films starting late and breaking down — then cheer up. The films this year will be shown at Ster-Kinekor complexes, the Constantia and Mall in Rosebank, in Hillbrow and, possibly, in their newly opened complex in Dobsonville, all in Johannesburg. The foundation plans to extend the festival to other cities, with the possibility of Cape Town this year, and Durban next year.
While there are major changes to the festival, the WM&G/Fawo Short Film Competition continues as usual. This year, in fact, over 60 films have been submitted, a record entry. There will be a panel discussion and debate on the films.
Prizes will be awarded for Best Fiction, Best Documentary and Best Animation, and include a trip overseas to a festival and the free processing of a feature film by Central Film Laboratories in Harare, Zimbabwe. The winning and nominated films will be shown on NNTV — no doubt in a late night slot, because these films often tackle contentious subjects.
The festival also includes the Video and Television Marketplace, “a space for filmmakers and distributors to sell their products to television networks”.
A highlight of the festival will be “Across the Continent”, a three-day seminar on films from Africa, the first in-depth look at African films since the end of the cultural boycott. Eight directors, including Ousmane Sembene from Senegal, will attend. Topics won’t only be film aesthethics and theory, though. Filmmakers will lift the lid on personal experiences in their local film industries, and the seminar will culminate with the presentation of the M-Net Film Awards.
A workshop, “Developing Visions”, will offer local youngsters an opportunity to create short videos, from story to final processing. Experienced filmmakers will work closely with four groups of 25 students, selected from initial groups of 80 to 100 high school students from various township and suburban schools. The videos, each lasting about 10 minutes, will be shown at the festival.
British comedian Trix Worrell, responsible for the long running black sitcom, Desmond’s, is being brought out by the British Council and will conduct a sitcom workshop, entitled “Story curves, comedy and life”.
Debates include the Guardian Debate chaired by Guardian film critic Derek Malcolm, who will talk to Ophuls and Van Peebles on their work. Ophuls, too, will discuss the ethics of screening the Holocaust, while another debate will look at new trends in violence in films.
And for all those ghouls out there who would rather experience movie violence than discuss it, there’s Midnight Neck Nibblers, screenings of vampire classics. Blood transfusions aren’t supplied.