Encouragingly, the SABC is helping to train aspirant film-makers, but the resulting 10- minute films are flawed, writes Andrew Worsdale
The short film has always been the principal tool as a training, testing and calling card for emerging moviemakers. Nowadays the format is booming with a proliferation of short film festivals around the world. With the South African feature film industry in a rut, a host of local short films has been made, mostly on a wish, a prayer and some donated or pilfered stock.
The latest encouragement for upcoming cineastes is Dramatic Encounters on SABC 2 that began last Wednesday and continues the whole month. It was conceived as a training scheme by the SABC’s training and development department, with matching sponsorship from the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology.
Of the 850 applicants 12 were selected. Ultimately, six 10-minute films were made after an intensive training programme with noted screenwriting lecturer Albie James, Ethiopian director Haile Gerima and a host of established local industry players.
The results are mixed and interesting – six distinct short films that combust and combine the variegations of South African nationality. Their embrace of the diversification of local culture is evident in the variety of languages they’re made in: English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Sotho, Venda and tsotsitaal.
They show technical aptitude despite the budget and time constraints – each film was shot for between R240 000 and R260 000, with two weeks of pre-production, a four- day shoot and three weeks of post- production.
In common with other series of its kind, Dramatic Encounters shows up the critical bane of South African cinema – too many issue based stories. Because they focus on a narrow, culture-specific experience and are dressed in stale generalities, they become stereotypical as opposed to universal.
The Caretaker, Heads or Tails and Markowitz all deal with racism and whites confronting new-found South African realities. The first, which started the series, has black farm labourers in conflict with their taciturn right-wing employer: the clich of a paternalistic Afrikaner confronting his “kaffirtjies”. It’s a seen-it-all-too- often-before examination of standing up to racism.
Heads Or Tails is a contrived, unfunny comedy with Frank Opperman as a victim of affirmative action robbing a bank to pay his rent. The script by Orange Farm resident Tumelo Eseu Phadi has a neat sense of tongue-in-cheekness, but the self- conscious, over-the-top direction by Munier Parker negates any subtlety and the stagey, awkward performances scupper what otherwise could have been a poignant and neat comic piece.
Markowitz follows a paranoid middle class white guy who ends up facing the real South Africa on the streets of Hillbrow. The premise of the script is neat and amusing, however the performances are again misjudged with Greg Humphries miscast in the lead and Brendan Grealy chewing up the scenery as an immigration officer. The acting in fact detracts from the story and one realises it’s an overwrought clich – remember Taxi to Soweto?
The final double bill in the series deals with cultural and social disintegration – a theme that is forever explored in South Africa’s movie landscape. Lotus Dreaming is a deceptively plain, yet decorative, story which follows a domestic worker entering an Indian dance competition against the wishes of her employer.
Despite going through 23 drafts, according to writer Tanya Mudaly, the movie has clumsy dialogue, the tensions between the two women are superficial and is not helped any further by a stilted performance from Nadine Naidoo, playing the difficult, frustrated wealthy housewife so typical of the genre of a maid dealing with an arrogant, stifling madam.
The Venda film Mountains are Falling, technically the most ambitious in the collection, also examines the stale notion of cultural clashes, as Western influences impinge on the traditional values and lifestyle of a sangoma and his son. With stylishly filmed exteriors and swooping crane shots, the film’s look lends it the sense of being a simple parable elevated to the heights of mystical realism, despite the story’s stilted shortcomings.
The only movie that doesn’t pander to characters as representative ciphers of some kind of message is Bongani Linda’s Is Chandis Maar is O’right from his own script. In it, Darlington Michaels is a spendthrift Kaizer Chiefs supporter posing as a rich and magnanimous lady’s man (much to the umbrage of his long-suffering wife).
It’s humorous and affecting without being self-conscious and is not issue-based – we get a sense of social context without being hit over the head with it. Like a gentle anecdote it’s an elementary, naive story with no pretensions, and for me the best and most universal in the series.
Linda, however, is not that happy with the film or with the exercise getting there: “The whole process wasn’t easy and I didn’t feel in control of my story. There were too many restrictions. It was also frustrating having to keep things at 10 minutes in order to tell the story. I don’t feel I had enough time to explore my main character or his relationships with his wife and best friend.”
Script supervisor Maureen Conway, who worked on all six films, believes the initiative is valuable but also has some reservations. “I think the process was too top heavy with executive producers, episode producers, trainee producers and series producers, so at times the directors had up to seven different people watching the rushes, which I believe was too overwhelming for them. Basically there were too many people calling the shots,” she says.
Perhaps the best thing about it all though is that the corporation’s training department is committed to taking this select group of filmmakers forward and not just collecting a bunch of newcomers for another series of shorts next year.
“At the end of the day it’s a learning process,” says training manager Caroline Carew-Maseko. “And we’ve decided to look at it like that instead of as a competition. We want to encourage those writers, producers and directors who were involved in this Dramatic Encounters and hopefully reach the point where we’ll be doing full- length dramas with them.”
Whether writing, producing or directing a ten-minute movie will ultimately enable an aspirant filmmaker to tackle a feature, remains to be seen.