Drum director Zola Maseko was born in exile in 1967 and, 20 years later, joined Umkhonto weSizwe. By 1992, though, he had laid down his arms and was studying at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield in Britain, where he specialised in documentary. He directed the documentaries Dear Sunshine and Scenes from Exile, and returned to South Africa in 1994 to write and direct his first fiction film, The Foreigner. In 1998 he directed The Life and Times of Sara Baartman, and last year won Best Newcomer Award at Sithengi (the South African Film and TV Market) in Cape Town; the film also won the award for Best Documentary.
The R40-million Drum, about the historic 1950s magazine and its ground-breaking investigative reporter, Henry Nxumalo, stars American Taye Diggs alongside a South African and British cast. Since completing Drum, which is being released this week, Maseko has started developing a three-part TV series, Homecoming — about three freedom fighters returning to South Africa — and is working on his next feature, Liverpool Leopard.
How much did you know about the era in which the film is set before you began researching and writing it?
My experience of the 1950s era began in 1990 while in exile at the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in Tanzania, just after the unbanning of the African National Congress. People were reminiscing about the past and what it was like then for people of my father’s generation — and the music of that time. This gradually became an obsession with me. I went to Europe to study and met people like Hugh Masekela, Louis Moholo and Don Mattera. While in Holland I began to do some research and, in 1994, I went to Jim Bailey’s archive and became interested in Henry Nxumalo and subsequently met his daughter and sons, who gave me access to photographs and memorabilia. That was the genesis of Drum.
In the film you are not credited as a writer, even though you did some work on the script. Why?
Well, after developing a draft of the script I made a deal with Armada Pictures and they brought in Jason Falardi to write the script. Since they had been the first to put in a substantial amount of money into the project, I signed their contract under Californian law. So we got screwed.
What went into the visual pre-paration for the film?
We had a good production designer and a good director of photography. I wanted people to smell Sophiatown within the production design. People have often said to me, especially abroad, that it is a stylised film, and by that they mean that it is the type of film they don’t expect coming from Africa. But I didn’t want it to be sleek; I wanted it to be as documentary-like as possible. I didn’t want the glorification of poverty, but the aesthetics of poverty can look quite beautiful visually if you go to Kliptown, for instance, and see how that looks.
Can you describe your working process with the actors?
I followed my character breakdown and looked at the various characters, such as Can Themba and Todd Matshikiza, and all the articles that they wrote. But it’s very different when an actor has to play a real-life person. What I tried to do was present these characters as respectfully as possible. It is a fact that Themba was an alcoholic, overcome by his demons. He felt robbed by the apartheid state and, as a result, left the country. Tumiso Masha portrays Can Themba with a good deal of sensitivity and dignity. These were very passionate men and women, and Henry Nxumalo was a philandering husband who became more conscientised and could no longer ignore what was happening around him. The Kortboy character played by Zola was made easier by Kortboy being alive. I wanted to see Kortboy as an amalgamation and composite of a gangster, and I wanted to know what it was really like to be a gangster in those days.
What was your reaction on seeing the film for the first time?
I’m a filmmaker and I belong to a select group of people, so I could only pat myself on the back. I saw it with different audiences and it was met with different reactions. I have seen audiences coming out of this film crying. For me it is an achievement when you realise how difficult it is for people to be moved to tears. At the pan-African festival in Burkina Faso they said Drum has set the aesthetic standard that all African films should emulate. The way I see it, African cinema needs to be taken out of the ghetto, taken out of the village. I mean, my film cost just over R40-million, and it looks like a Hollywood film. This is what African film should aspire to.
Drum opens at cinemas on July 22.