Alex Sudheim
Celebrating its 20th birthday this year is the Durban International Film Festival, one of South Africa’s premier cinematic events. With a programme boasting 30 intriguing examples of alternative cinema from around the globe, the festival is a blessed relief for Durban cinephiles starved of indie action.
Since Ster Kinekor’s technocrats deemed the city unworthy of one of their art movie ghettoes, Durban film fans prickle with indignation each time an interesting film is released yet pointedly snubs these shores. What the hell would they know about “Cinema Nouveau” anyway? In Durban they’re still watching Rambo at the drive-in and think cappuccino is a mispronunciation of Koffiehuis, right?
Wrong. The annual International Film Festival has grown in stature and popularity each year, and has become a significant event on the country’s cultural calendar.
Ever wondered why hardly any Durbanites go to Grahamstown each year? It’s because for two whole weeks, in their own backyard, they can steep themselves in some of the most compelling fare the cutting edge of original contemporary cinema has to offer.
This year, for example, the film festival features the South African premiere of The War Zone, the debut feature by Tim Roth. In his first sortie behind the camera, the acclaimed actor has chosen as his subject the controversial novel of sexual deviancy by Alexander Stuart. In the bucolic environs of the quiet English countryside, the air of pastoral idyll is slowly eroded as a disturbing tale of incest and carnal obsession unfolds.
Also dwelling in the darker recesses of human experience is Alan Duff, who follows his shattering Once Were Warriors with What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted? Duff, who was a guest at last year’s festival, continues the saga of Jack and Beth Heke, the Maori couple whose family is devastated by complex cycles of mental and physical violence. A portrait of proud tribal identity corrupted by modern life, the film shows Beth (reprised by Rena Owen) attempting to escape her stricken fate while Jack (again played by Temeura Morrison) continues his staggering feats of alcoholism, drawn further into the vortex of violence as a result of his sons’ tragic involvement in gang warfare. Directed by veteran New Zealand film-maker Ian Mune, What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted? is a work of bone-jarring intensity not recommended for the faint of heart.
Another film of note in this year’s line-up is Italian master Bernardo Bertolucci’s latest opus, Besieged. Starring Thandie Newton and David Thewlis, the narrative revolves around a young African girl who leaves her homeland under a cloud and ends up keeping house for a wealthy, reclusive English gentleman living in Italy. Needless to say, the eccentric Englishman falls helplessly in love with the mysterious young African woman in a film described as “understated and elusive” and filled with “great subtlety” and “visual opulence”. With any luck Bertolucci will have eschewed the cloying sentiment of Stealing Beauty in favour of the elegant austerity of Last Tango in Paris and The Sheltering Sky.
Also worthy of mention is Killer, the Kazakhstan/French co-production which is a meticulously plotted film-noir thriller set against the backdrop of an emergent, hostile consumerism in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s capital. Swedish director Kjell Sundwall’s The Last Contract is the first film to probe the mysterious JFK-style slaying of Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme in 1986.
>From America comes Permanent Midnight, David Veloz’s bleakly comedic debut starring Ben Stiller as a Hollywood scriptwriter who leads a double life as a desperate heroin addict. Set in sleazy Los Angeles nightclubs and cheap motels, the gritty urban tragicomedy of the surreal Los Angeles netherworld is based on the autobiography of screenwriter Jim Stahl.
South Africa weighs in with but one feature film – actor Ross Kettle’s directorial debut After the Rain. Set in and around Cape Town, the work explores the familiar themes of social, political and racial conflict in the dying days of the apartheid regime. Similar territory is visited by Swedish director Maj Wechselmann, whose documentary film Speak To Me Sisters is the result of two years of research in this country. Twenty-five South African women from across the cultural and social spectrum speak candidly about their experiences during the apartheid era.
Included in the fortnight of film are also new cinematic works from Australia, Switzerland, Taiwan, Holland, Ireland, Colombia, Germany, Israel and Burkina Faso. Don’t miss out on the annual Durban mega-fix of quality screen-time – without a Cinema Nouveau it’s a long way until l’annee nouvelle.
The 20th Durban International Film Festival runs in the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre (University of Natal, Durban) until July 9
Thandie Newton stars in Bertolucci’s Beseiged