SBFEST - 5 x releases
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2. CRAFTART
3. EXPERTS, DIRECTORS, ACTORS AND PRODUCERS
4. SOUTH AFRICAN PREMIERES AT THE FESTIVAL
5. AFRICA ON FILM
A LAMENT FOR OUR TIMES
Celebrated writer, playwright and artist, Breyten Breytenbach and master
designer and director, Marthinus Basson reunite for a second time after
their critically acclaimed Boklied, to produce a new theatrical event -
Johnny Cockroach (A Lament for Our Times) - for the 1999 Standard Bank
National Arts Festival.
Johnny Cockroach (A Lament for Our Times) is a play of actors, singers,
musicians, spirits and gods. It captures some of the century's upheavals
and complexities through the use of a wide reach of theatrical
disciplines. Combing song, dance, physical theatre and music -
orchestral and alternative Afrikaner rock - the dreamers and
revolutionaries get one more chance to justify their actions before the
birth of the new millennium.
The diverse cast reflects an unusual combination of performers ranging
from opera diva Sibongile Mngoma to Afrikaans rock-poet Johannes
Kerkorrel. The rest of the cast includes actors drawn from a wide scope
of backgrounds, from classically trained to community performers as well
as a visitor from the Kalahari who has never seen the inside of a
theatre. Tom van der Schuren and Ewald Cress, in conjunction with
Adriaan Brandt from the Springbok Nude Girls, will arrange the musical
score.
Throughout the play, the actors will recapture the fury and folly before
a `Bench' of three women who are the wives, mothers, sisters and lovers
of all those who changed the world and created a `new man'. The drama
takes place in the tortured, ironic presence of Johnny Cockroach, the
oldest form of life and one that will outlive us all.
"The whole world is a stage, we are the actors of our lives and our
mortality, and the substance of our shadow movements is the froth of
history and the madness of dreaming"(Breyten Breytenbach).
CRAFTART
Due to the phenomenal success of last year's programme, the focus of
Craftart 1999 will once again be Working with Wood. During the
celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Standard Bank National Arts
Festival, Grahamstown gets the opportunity to watch and participate in
the carving, sculpting, decorating and manufacturing of the practical
or ornamental, but always beautiful, creations made from wood.
What is offered includes more examples of cabinet making and joinery, a
special feature on the uses of wood for printmaking, a showing of the
various Xhosa and Mfengu techniques used to make traditional sticks and
pipes, and an exhibition of treen from mid-19th century life.
Graham Jones, practising artist and part time lecturer in the Faculty of
Art and Design at Port Elizabeth Technikon, shows through his quirky
work that wood and the tree are "very inspiring". During his workshops,
he will guide participants on a woodcarving journey after giving a brief
talk on wood, its characteristics and history of its uses.
Stick and pipe making are traditional crafts in the Eastern Cape,
practised exclusively by men. As part of the Craftart programme, Dr
Melanie Hillebrand - director of the George VI Arts Gallery in Port
Elizabeth - will conduct four walkabout tours of the exhibition and
explain the cultural relevance of the engraved images.
Printmakers Philippa Hobbs and Skye Holland will hold workshop sessions
on woodcut printing as well as discuss the intricacies of their craft
with the public. Carving tools and initial cutting will be demonstrated
and participants will be shown how to prepare their own wood blocks for
carving.
Perhaps one of the more unusual features of Craftart 1999 Ghanian
coffin maker, Ben Kane Kwei Sowah. While the creation of figurative
coffins in Ghana is a relatively recent development, the art is entirely
in keeping with African traditions of wood-carving and painting.
Depending on the social standing of the deceased, coffin styles are
adapted to suit; thus a farmer may be buried in a giant onion or a
cocoa-pod, a hunter in a lion and a fisherman in a sardine. During the
course of the Festival Sowah will be completing one of his artworks and
displaying another; a Mercedes Benz coffin.
Marina Niven, Dorothy Momberg and Rica Gallarelli, specialist decorative
painters and the originators of popular decorative painting techniques,
demonstrate all aspects of their art showing how to achieve a number of
furniture finishes, guaranteed to enhance even the most drab furniture.
The craftart exhibition of treen - a term once used to describe useful
objects made from wood or woody seed - comes from one of the oldest
houses in the Eastern cape, No 7 Castle Hill, home of the 1820 Settler
Reverend Francis McCleland. The house dates from 1830 and the displays
depict domestic life in the mid-19th century.
Craftart 1999 and Working with Wood promises to be as interesting,
entertaining, creative and educational.
EXPERTS, DIRECTORS, ACTORS AND PRODUCERS
The 1999 Standard Bank National Arts Film Festival once again sticks to
the long-held tradition of bringing a varied array of interesting and
acclaimed films and experts to the Festival. The programme - now under
the direction of Trevor Steele-Taylor - is a celluloid lover's dream,
with themes and films ranging from sixties and seventies exploitation
movies and a tribute to Hong Kong action cinema through to films from
the Czech Republic and Denmark.
Under the umbrella title Femme USA, three independent films from
independent women is presented.
American actress, producer, writer Deborah Twiss and director Todd
Morris introduce their gritty and controversial film A Gun for Jennifer.
Violent and fiercely confrontational, it tells the story of a band of
women in New York who form a vigilante group to emasculate and
annihilate rapists. Director Francesca Talenti from Austin, Texas will
introduce her wonderful labyrinthine post-modern comedy Snake Tales in
which a girl, riding through a remote part of Texas, runs over a rare
blue snake. Taken into custody, she has to tell her story to the judge.
Someone in her story starts to tell another story and then another story
develops out of that.
Art for Teachers of Children is an audacious film debut by Jennifer
Montgomery who reconstructs her own experience of under-age sex. Her
teenage affair with a married schoolteacher who likes to take nude
photographs of young girls, lands her up 15 years later refusing to
testify against him on child-pornography charges. Challenging
preconceived notions about abuse of power and the real age of consent,
the film is erotic, moving and profoundly subversive.
Daring, original, surreal and terrifying are just some of the adjectives
that can be used when describing the four films presented from the Czech
Republic. Sekal has to Die, the official entry into the 1999 Academy
awards, will be introduced by director Vladimir Michalek and producer
Jaroslav Boucek. The other films are Traps, King Ubu and The Bed.
Danish director Lars von Trier is now well known in South Africa due to
his acclaimed 1996 film Breaking the Waves, which won the Grand Jury
Prize at Cannes. Along with his prize-winning film, the retrospective
also includes The Element of Crime, a gripping, visually stunning
anti-detective eighties masterpiece; Zentropa, a deeply poetic mystery
and The Kingdom - made for TV, but released in cinemas throughout many
countries, it is a stinging satire and a moving love story.
Those with a love of the bizarre and depraved will have ample
opportunity to visually fulfil any weird and wonderful fantasies at the
late-night screenings of sixties and seventies exploitation movies.
Included in the line-up is The Devil's Rain - a piece of western gothica
with cameos by the leader of the Church of Satan, Anton la Vay and John
Travolta in his first screen role; Hells Belles (or The Girl in the
Leather Suit); Countess Dracula - an original take on the historical
"Bloody Countess" Bathory who bathed in the blood of virgins to retain
her youth; The Big Doll House: the first of the "women in prison"
classics; The Revenge of the Blood Beast (or She Beast) and They Call
Her One Eye - starring erotic sixties actress Christina Lindberg.
In a far cry from the stereotypical bad dubbing jobs and cheesy plots,
the tribute to Hong Kong action cinema incorporates nihilistic
masterpieces and violent and intensely emotional dramas that elicit a
visceral response. Titles in this tribute are: Love and Death in Saigon,
Bullet in the Head and Full Contact.
As if all of the above wasn't enough to satisfy a plethora of tastes,
Johannesburg film critic Leon van Nierop continues his popular series
Seeing Sense: on Film Analysis. His focus for this year lands on Boogie
Nights, Pleasantville, The Butcher Boy, Photographing Fairies and Velvet
Goldmine.
SOUTH AFRICAN PREMIERES AT THE FESTIVAL
Six films will have their first South African screenings at the 1999
Standard Bank National Arts Festival in Grahamstown.
>From Ster-Kinekor comes Beyond Silence - an extraordinary and charming
film about a young deaf girl, the daughter of deaf parents, who finds
fulfilment in playing a clarinet that she cannot hear. The rift that
develops between sound and silence becomes a further rift between
herself and her parents.
Men with Guns is a beautiful example of old fashioned storytelling from
the acclaimed American independent director of Lone Star, John Sayles.
Dr Fuentes is dismayed to find that medical students whom he trained to
work in isolated villages start disappearing. He finds it hard to
believe that anyone in his unspecified central American country would
kill a doctor. He heads off to discover the truth.
Iranian director Majid Majidi's film - Children of Heaven - is a child's
tale, but also a poignant cinematic lesson in humanity and how innocence
can be taken for granted. The film bears a passing resemblance to
Vittorio de Sica's masterpiece Bicycle Thieves, both films finding
emotional resonance in the relationship between parent and child.
Nu-Metro presents Another Day in Paradise from photographer and
filmmaker Larry Clark - the controversial director of the movie Kids.
James Woods and Melanie Griffith give magnificent performances in this
tale of drug abuse, sex and foul language.
Director Richard Attenborough, synonymous with great epics and visual
grandeur will not disappoint fans in his latest venture, Grey Owl. It
tells the tale of a man dedicated to preserving pristine wilderness
areas. This man, known as Grey Owl (Pierce Brosnan), was born Archibald
Belaney in Hastings, England. Masquerading as an Ojibway Indian (the
fact that he was English was discovered only after his death), he is
best remembered as being the father of the conservation movement.
The mysteries surrounding the life and death of Elvis Presley have
produced a myriad of speculative theories and apocryphal tales. In
Finding Graceland Bridget Fonda and Johnathon Schaech go looking for
that quintessential American phenomenon, the King. Harvey Keitel stars
as Elvis and David Winkler directs. To quote the tagline: "Life isn't
about believing in dreams ... it's about living them".
AFRICA ON FILM
A distinct African feel is added to the 1999 Standard Bank National Arts
Film Festival with documentaries, features and tributes to South African
play-write Athol Fugard and Senegalese film maker Djibril Diop Mambety.
The contemporary South African documentary programme includes six
dramatically different films.
The Furiosus focuses on parliamentary messenger, Dimitri Tsafendas, who
- in 1966 - stabbed the South African prime minister Dr Hendrik Verwoerd
to death in parliament. Although found insane, he was imprisoned on
death row for 28 years. Now a man in his eighties, he has spent the last
four years in Sterkfontein Mental Hospital. A labour of love for
director Liza Key, who befriended Tsafendas through many hours of
visits, the film is a fascinating journey into the madness, not of one
man, but of a whole society.
When director Tjaart Theron decided to investigate the horrifying murder
of a family in the small town of Carolina, he had little idea that he
would finally be making a film about his own past. Donker Donker Land
shows the people of Carolina closing ranks, leaving only the local
police chief to talk. The cloud of Calvinist repression and denial takes
Theron into his own background in a small Calvinist community, his work
as a dominee, and finally his rejection of the society which moulded
him.
Jurgen Schadeberg's fascinating documentary, entitled Ernest Cole,
examines the life of Cole, the first photojournalist to expose the world
to the stark realities of apartheid. The price he paid was high - a life
in exile and a lonely death away from his home. His images of the
fifties and the sixties are a timeless testimony to the injustices of
the society he recorded.
The films of Kevin Harris have consistently been screened in
Grahamstown. A tireless documenter of the resistance years, his new
film, Unfinished Business or Joe's Brother, is an often shocking
investigation - through the eyes of the protagonist Joe Seramane - into
the circumstances surrounding the execution of his brother in the ANC
training camp of Quatro in Angola in 1981. His journey takes him finally
to the man who personally ordered his brother's execution, General
Andrew Masondo.
Siphiwo Mtimkulu - The Final Chapter is a startling documentary set
around the TRC hearings involving Gideon Niewoudt, the security
policeman responsible for many Eastern Cape killings. His killing of
Siphiwo Mtimkulu in 1982 is the centrepiece of the film.
Sando to Samantha or The Art of Dikvel tells the story of Sando Willemse
- a.k.a. Samantha Fox - a drag queen who was tested for HIV without his
permission while in the Defence Force. His condition was announced to
his squad and he was dismissed. Turning to prostitution to survive, he
found friendship and support in a community of drag queens working in
Cape Town's streets. He died of HIV-related causes in 1996 aged 22.
Narrated by Willemse, the film blends interview and drama to provide a
wonderful testimony to his courage and daring.
M-Net presents Chikin Biznis - The Whole Story. Internationally
premièred to a crowded cinema at this year's Göteborg Film Festival,
Ntshaveni Wa Luruli's playful film about a man who leaves a menial job
at the stock exchange to sell chickens in Soweto, received a ten-minute
standing ovation. A landmark in South African cinema, it is a black
South African film in every way with a black director and writer and a
mainly black cast. It is also a film which, without political agendas,
crosses into the world of ordinary black South Africans.
Once again M-Net introduces the New Directions series, now becoming a
regular feature at the Festival. Titles in this year's programme are:
Cry Me a Baby, An Old Wife's Tale, Salvation, Twins of the Rain Forest,
A Place Called Home and The White Handkerchief. All come from Africa and
deal with important and timely themes.
The Made for the Cape Short Film Project encompasses three 12 minute
films that have the Mother City as their backdrop: Stompie and the Red
Tide - the story of a bergie, Stompie, who wanders up and down the West
Coast with his mate Rosie; On the Rocks - directed by the iconoclastic
Cedric Sundstrom about a culture clash focusing on Clifton Beach and a
cave in which some vagrants live and Kap an Driver where an elderly
white woman takes a hair-raising ride in a `black' taxi from Cape Town
station to Muizenberg but finds friendship. It is directed by Tim Green.
Djibril Diop Mambety, one of Africa's finest filmmakers, died last year.
His films deliver a totally unique vision of Africa. Touki Bouki is a
picturesque tale of Mary and Anta, African cousins of outlaw couples
like Bonnie and Clyde. Desperate to escape the raucous shanty town where
they live, they travel on an exhilarating journey through Dakar as they
try gambling, stealing and even prostitution to get out of town. Hyenas
is perhaps Mambety's most idiosyncratic film. Based on a play by
Friedrich Durrenmat, a woman returns to her small home village after
many years away. She had left the town in disgrace, penniless and
pregnant. On her return, however, she is fabulously wealthy and sports a
false leg made of gold. The town is falling apart and all those who once
shunned her now court her favour. She agrees to save the town - but, she
has a stipulation.
The tribute to Athol Fugard includes two films: The Guest is Ross
Devenish's rarely seen film in which Athol Fugard played the Afrikaner
intellectual, naturalist, poet, author of The Soul of the White Ant and
rebel, Eugene Marais. Focusing on a period when Marais was attempting to
overcome morphine addiction on a remote farm, Devenish's film is a dark
and poetic examination of a life that, in Marais's words "is foundered
on pain and sorrow". The Road to Mecca focuses on the small town of Nieu
Bethesda, where the extraordinary `artist of the naive', Helen Maartens,
created sculptures made of ground glass and concrete. Based on an Athol
Fugard play, the film boasts a wonderful performance by the late Yvonne
Bryceland in one of her last and finest roles.
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