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/ 27 August 2004

Brutality of life

"A film like this, bizarrely, hasn’t been made before," Roodt says. Come to think of it, he’s right. Despite the pandemic in South Africa, can you recall ever seeing a full-length film featuring an HIV-positive protagonist? Nicole Temkin chats to director Darryl Roodt about <i>Yesterday</i>.

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/ 7 May 2003

Twist, or die trying

So determined is Tim Greene to get his feature film <i>Twist</i> on to the big screen, that he’s come up with a novel idea to raise finance — appealing to 1 000 people to pledge to invest R1 000 each. Nicole Temkin asked him how far he has to go.

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/ 20 September 2002

Tobias digs up genetic dirt

Evolution, according to the dictionary, implies "a gradual development to a more complex form". If we indeed are more intelligent than any other species on Earth, the obvious conundrum must be: why is our planet in such a mess? All the more relevant in the wake of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, it’s crucial that we find and implement solutions to pressing environmental issues. Perhaps if we’re more informed about the consequences of our actions, then we might behave somewhat differently.

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/ 20 June 2002

Looking back with humour

Six years ago journalist and screenwriter Patrick Lee left South Africa for England. There, in his spare time, he began to weave together an absurdly humourous story of a displaced Englishwoman and the characters she encounters while visiting her place of birth, Port Victoria — a dorp inhabited by both strange and familiar stereotypes in a changed and changing country. In the novel, Discards (Penguin), Lee successfully captures the dialogue and archetypal mentalities of a specific time and place — not all of them comfortable. Filled with characters such as Mendi Mkhize (former freedom fighter, now magistrate), Dom Marais (wealthy marijuana farmer), Woodstock (psychotic, misogynistic Afrikaner) and Breakdown (crazy, black vagrant), Lee has created a South African novel finely tailored and rhythmically written for a niche market — South Africans.