Alex Dodd spoke to Wayne Barker and Susan Glanville about how to get artists to speak for themselves
“Sorry I couldn’t get back to you sooner, but we’ve had two babies in the last 24 hours”, breathes Susan Glanville down the phone, sounding frayed and mysterious like Judy Davis in Woody Allen’s Celebrity. Editor Christine Hodges’s baby girl decided to make her grand entry into the world only hours after the launch of their brand new series of short documentary films on contemporary artists in South Africa.
Produced and directed by Glanville along with the renownedly cocky but magnetic artist Wayne Barker (who also contributed invaluably to the other aforementioned creation), ‘seeing ourselves’ is cause for celebration. It just remains to be seen whether e.tv will take up the great opportunity they have been given. The 10- minute format of the programmes was consciously designed so the inserts could be screened and re-screened whenever there’s a gap to turn Cohen and Sebidi into household names.
If e.tv wants to make a serious contribution beyond the lip service of local content quotas, they’ll screen those little shorts like Omo ads. Then, if they’re extremely lucky, Barker might eat his hat .