Bizet’s tragic opera Carmen has been translated for the first time into the South African language of Xhosa and turned into a stunning film shot in a Cape Town township, which premiered on Sunday at the Berlinale film festival in Germany.
uCarmen eKhayelitsha, or Carmen in Khayelitsha, the township where the story of love, jealousy, revenge and ultimately murder has been set, stars a 40-person music and theatre troupe in their debut before the camera.
The audience warmly applauded the film, which is only the second South African feature to compete for a prestigious Golden Bear award and the first to be screened in a quarter century at the annual festival.
Carmen is played superbly by Pauline Malefane, who was also instrumental in carrying out the translation. The 29-year-old has already portrayed Carmen many times on stage but said moving the French opera from a Spanish slum to a South African setting and transforming it into a movie was a challenge.
”To our amazement, in the film you start with the last thing, you have to die before you fall in love,” she told a news conference to loud laughter.
”I am still coming to terms with that.”
Many operas have been translated and seen silver screen versions but uCarmen breaks new ground.
”It’s the first time any opera has been translated into a black South African language. Xhosa works brilliantly, it’s such a musical language,” said music director Charles Hazlewood.
The film opens as Nomakhaya (played by Lungelwa Blou) arrives in the township, looking for her sweetheart, the policeman Jongihkaya (Andile Tshoni). Jongihkaya promises his love to Nomakhaya but soon succumbs to the charms of the sensual but independent Carmen.
Jongihkaya is suspended from his job when he lets Carmen, arrested after a fight in the cigarette factory, escape. Attempts to woo Carmen fail, and he loses her forever when he chooses professional duty over love.
At the end, Carmen lies dead at the hands of Jongihkaya, and the camera pans back over the tin roofs of the township.
uCarmen, which is due to premiere before South African President Thabo Mbeki in Khayelitsha on March 3 before touring other townships, is the first feature effort by British performing arts veteran Mark Dornford-May.
Four years ago the former artistic director of the Broomhill Opera in London founded with Hazlewood the South African Academy of Performing Arts, a Cape Town ensemble now called Dimpho Di Kopane (meaning combined talents in Sotho).
Dornford-May bemoaned how ”exclusive” opera had become, even though it is ”the most inclusive of all the live performing arts, because it has a bit of everything in it, singing, dancing, performance and storytelling”.
”Hopefully, films like Carmen will help break a bit of that exclusivity.”
For Malefane, making the film in the township was fascinating, though she was amused to see that some people were intimidated by all the equipment, particularly the huge microphone booms.
”One guy saw me running from the police and thought I was running from these animals,” she said.
Searching out the funding for uCarmen was not easy, but Dornford-May was full of praise for the risk-taking financiers, who include the backers of his company and the South African government.
”There was tremendous support for what on paper looks like a totally mad project. But I think it was so mad that [the] financial [supporters] assumed it must have some common sense behind it,” he said.
He is not resting for long, though. In fact, he said he and his troupe were already in the middle of shooting a second film, which is just slightly wider in scope.
”It’s an adaptation of the New Testament into South African situations. We pick simple stories.”
The Golden and Silver Bears are awarded on Saturday, while the 11-day Berlinale closes February 20. ‒ Sapa-AFP