JURGEN and Claudia Schadeberg have been enjoying a fortnight of television exposure with two programmes on Saturday’s Live and Learn slot – on child abuse and child abandonment – and their evocative documentary profile of Dolly Rathebe and the Inkspots, which was screened on Thursday this week.
Dolly and the Inkspots, which first screened on the former NNTV, is a marvellous 28-minute musical treat that reunites the legendary queen of blues with her backing band. All of them recall the glorious Fifties, when they were the toast of Sof’town, getting top billing at gigs across the country.
Some vintage extracts from their movies are intercut with present-day interviews, scenes at Dolly’s shebeen in Mabopane, and a glorious reunion where all of them, slightly racked with age, deliver their glorious harmonies as if it was still the good old days.
Schadeberg has known Dolly for many years, having photographed her in 1952 for Drum magazine. She was posing in a bikini on a mine dump, and the two were arrested on suspicion of contravening the Immorality Act.
Their two other films screened over this fortnight couldn’t be more opposite in tone. Both made for SABC’s education department, the first dealt with child abuse and featured children relating horrifying tales of their experiences.
The second, due to screen on SABC2 at 9am this Saturday June 28, focuses on abandoned children. It’s a fascinating and sobering look at the fate of kids and babies cast out and left in anything from dustbins to churches. A wide range of social workers and foster mothers talk about the epidemic.
Schadeberg says the couple have always made films about social issues although most of their work has focused on life during the heydays of Drum and Sophiatown, and that these two shows also deal with issues that people don’t want to talk about. The major problem seems to be that the corporation is screening them at 9am, traditionally kiddies’ time, when they should be shown in a later slot and made compulsory teenage and adult viewing.
The Schadebergs have developed numerous projects over the years that have been rejected by the broadcaster. In 1990 they managed to raise about $4,5-million for a feature film, Mr Drum, which was to have been an authentic account of the period.
Several months into pre-production, having turned an empty hotel in Randburg into a studio, built sets and had Rathebe rehearse with the Elite Swingsters, they were forced to show the script to Home Affairs to get visas for the French crew. The authorities said the film was illegal and the French producers and crew involved were barred from ever entering the country again.
In 1992 they spent R600 000 on an evocatively realised pilot for a mini- series, Drumbeats, set in the past and present ,about a team of investigative journalists that uncovers a killing farm similar to Vlakplaas. The corporation deemed the film too controversial and it was rejected by all channels.
Their latest speculative project is a 58- minute documentary, called the Dogs Must Be Crazy, an incisive look at canine behavioural problems which pleads for owners not to train their animals to unnatural aggression.