Topical and tropical

Durban starts to enjoy the cappuccino-scented enclave of Cinema Nouveau only when mega-mall Gateway opens its doors at the end of the month. For years the only solace from the mainstream for movie mavens in these parts was provided by the Durban International Film Festival which, from September 17 to 30, steams into its 22nd year in formidable form.

Festival director Nashen Moodley has summoned top-drawer film fare from our own backyard and around the world to create a world-class package which features a greater emphasis on African filmmaking and the hottest property from the international film festival circuit.

DIFF 2001 contains an inspired range of workshops and forums in and around the city, including the free screening, in 10 episodes, of Ken Burns’s 18-hour epic Jazz in Durban’s plentiful jazz joints. The films about filmmaking — Cinema Verité and Visions of Light — are introduced by visiting directors and form part of the workshops for first-time filmmakers that were so popular last year. A definite coup is the hosting of the workshops Creativity In The Age Of Sequels and Coming Soon To A Theatre Near You: How To Make Your First Film by Fernando Sulichin, producer of much of Spike Lee’s oeuvre.

Sulichin played a pivotal role in the festival’s acquisition of Bully, the new film by Larry Clark, creator of the acclaimed and controversial Kids. Sulichin, who is also the producer of Bully, met South African director Oliver Schmitz (maker of Mapantsula and Hijack Stories and special guest of the festival) in Europe and expressed keen interest in coming to Durban. The deal was sealed and Sulichin will introduce the South African première of Bully during the festival. Scripted by David McKenna (American History X), Bully sees Clark returning to the violent and disturbing underworld previously documented in Kids in a work which influential film critic Egbert awarded one of his rare four stars.

Also on the cards this year is Moulin Rouge, one of the most eagerly awaited films of the year and the latest work by the maker of the LA gang-banging version of Romeo and Juliet. Baz Luhrmann’s lush portrait of the late 19th century is one where the lines between the imaginary world of theatre and the wildness of Bohemian life blur into a decadent and dramatic sensual meltdown.

Another film causing a stir is Baise Moi (Fuck Me), the rampant French sex-thriller which was banned in France, censored in Britain but presented totally uncut in Durban. The relentlessly shocking tale of two women, Nadine and Manu, and their nihilistic, sex- and blood-drenched rampage through France has been described as “Thelma and Louise taken to the absolute extreme”.

The Durban festival also bestows much attention on the finest films from the African continent in an assembly of arresting new work from Senegal, Mali, Guinea and South Africa. One is the retrospective of Senegalese master filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambety, whose two great works Hyenas and Touki Bouki are accompanied by his lesser known tragi-comic fable Le Franc and the work completed just before his death, the magnificent The Little Girl Who Sold The Sun.

From Mali comes the ingenious and powerful La Genése, Cheik Oumar Sissokoís apocalyptic tour-de-force which is based upon chapters 23 to 37 of Genesis and stars world-music icon Salif Keita. Temporary Registration is Guinea director Gahité Fofana’s shimmering portrait of a rootless generation which tells the story of the son of a Frenchwoman who travels back to Guinea to find his natural father, only to discover him as an old, wasted alcoholic.

One of the highlights of the South African contribution to the festival are Oliver Schmitz’s features Mapantsula and Hijack Stories. Though separated by 13 years, the films display remarkable similarity as they chronicle the shifting socio-political landscape of South Africa. Though they occupy the identical physical landscape of Johannesburg, Soweto and Orlando, the two films are poles apart when it comes to the terrain of the mind and heart.

Mapantsula is an apartheid gangster story whereas Hijack Stories is a post-apartheid gangster story, says Schmitz.

“The former was about the politicisation of a gangster, whereas the latter charts the cynical decline of an activist into gangsterism.”

Schmitz will be on hand to introduce and discuss his films, as will top South African filmmakers William Kentridge and Teboho Mahlatsi.

World-renowned for his unique stop-frame animation of charcoal drawings, Kentridge will present a package of his short films including Johannesburg, 2nd Greatest City After Paris; Monument, Mine; Sobriety; Obesity And Growing Old; Felix In Exile; History Of The Main Complaint; Weighing And Wanting; Stereoscope and Ubu Tells The Truth.

Mahlatsi, co-director of the notorious television reality show Yizo Yizo, will be discussing his work, conducting workshops and presenting his acclaimed short film Portrait Of A Young Man Drowning, which he describes as “a dramatic allegory of a killer seeking redemption set in a tough urban landscape”.

With more than 70 first-rate films on the programme, it’s time to set your eyes to “auditorium gloom” mode and invest in some really dark shades should you inadvertently encounter sunshine, for the cinema will most certainly be the only place to be in Durban from September 17 to 30.

(031) 260 2506 or 260 1145. Tickets can be purchased from Computicket or the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre. Books of 10 tickets are available at the Sneddon Theatre at R150.