September 22, 2003
By Lucky Sindane
THE first-ever film festival is currently on in Alexandra township, with screenings of the various movies taking place at a local community centre and several taverns.
The Alex Film Festival 2003, organised by the Film Resource Unit and KO Pitseng Productions in association with the Gauteng Film Office, 3 Continents Film Festival and Arts Alive, kicked off on Friday with the documentary African Rhythms and will continue until 26 September.
The festival is dedicated to the late "Big Voice Jack" Lerole, a musician who hailed from Alexandra and was famous for his kwela playing.
African Rhythms traces various musical pathways from marabi through to kwela and mbaqanga and explores the lives of those who made the music. It characterises the post-1994 period in South Africa and features music giants Lerole, Jonas Gwanga and Pops Mohamed. Gwangwa adds his incisive commentary to the development of music in Johannesburg and its surrounding townships.
Speaking at the launch of the festival CEO of the Film Resource Unit Mike Dearham said: "We need to encourage people to develop a cinema culture, they have to start going to the movies."
This event was more than just another film festival, Dearham added, it was part of a process for South Africans to reclaim their heritage and instil a sense of memory and public appreciation for the many fallen heroes like "Big Voice Jack" that gave so much of themselves over the years.
The film festival would contribute to the growth and development of all, said Pascal Damoyi of KO Pitseng Productions. "Film and arts are the vehicles that will grow consciousness and self knowledge," he added.
"People are clamouring for new stories they can relate to and that are relevant to their daily lives," Damoyi said.
A film literacy and script workshop will be held after the film festival, from 29 September to 30 September. Organisers hoped the screenings would "stimulate and provoke audiences, particularly the youth to be insightful and to reflect on their community and society at large".
Directors and producers would be invited to attend the workshops to help prospective writers script and build their ideas.
Speaking of the choice of venues for the film festival - the Alexsan Kopane Community Centre and 12 local taverns - Damoyi said Hollywood was gradually losing its grip on cinemagoers and movie houses were getting emptier by the day. "That the reason we are showing the movies in the shebeens and other venues."
The festival, he added, would become an annual event with more and more screenings taking place in informal and alternative venues.
The Alex Film Festival 2003 schedule:
At the Alexsan Kopano Hall
Monday 22 September
Time: 2.30pm
Title: Waiting Valdez
A poignant tale of a young boy torn between his love for his dying grandmother and the desire to sneak out to listen to the stories (around a drum fire) of movies his friends have seen.
Title: A Drink in a Passage
A screen-adaptation of an Alan Paton story, this film short tells of a celebrated black sculptor who recalls the curious events that led him to share a drink of brandy with a white family during the height of apartheid.
Time: 6.30pm
Title: Lumumba
Assassinated Congolese president Patrice Lumumba speaks from the grave, refusing to be forgotten, insisting on setting the record straight even as the Congo is once again wracked by civil war.
Tuesday 23 September
Time: 2.30pm
Title: Girlhood
Girlhood is a harrowing snapshot of life on the streets in Cape flats. Girlhood uses the voices of the young to unravel their duality as both victims and perpetrators of crime, along with their desire to take control of their lives.
Title: The Shoeshine President
Lula, a former shoeshine boy with little formal education, wins a landslide victory to become president of Brazil. The Shoeshine President captures the heady atmosphere of history in the making, but the reality is harsh. With his hands tied by debt will President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva be able to fulfil his promise to feed the 30-million people starving in his country.
Time: 6.30pm
Title: Jenin Jenin
"Where is God?" an elderly man wonders when surveying the debris in the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin. The film, directed and co-produced by Palestinian actor and director Mohammed Bakri, includes testimony from Jenin residents after the Israeli army's Operation Defensive Wall, during which the city and camp were the scenes of fierce fighting.
Wednesday 24 September
Time: 2.30pm
Title: Portrait of a Young Man Drowning
The film follows the journey of Shadow, a young killer. In search of redemption, he decides to go to the funeral of his most recent victim. Rejected by his community, he is forced to find in himself the new sense of identity he has been searching for.
Title: Rhythms of Africa: Scratched, Mixed and ...
The film features rap, kwaito, hip-hop and traditional music from Zanzibar, Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Time: 6.30pm
Title: Yellow Card
A tangled love story lies at the heart of Yellow Card. Tiyane Tsumba is looking for love and recognition. He finds it from classmate Linda Karombo but cannot return her feelings, instead falling for a girl across town.
Title: Sankofa
Sankofa is a stunning masterpiece about self-determination, overcoming adversity and healing pain. Shot on location in Jamaica and Ghana, the film takes its viewers through a moving experience that portrays the caste system of slavery through the eyes of a present day model who is snatched back in time to experience life on a sugar cane plantation.
Thursday 25 September
Time: 2.30pm
Title: Between Joyce and Remembrance
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings offered the world a snapshot of apartheid atrocities, but little is known of the impact on families of victims or whether real reconciliation ever took place at a personal level. This film confronts the complexity of these questions through looking at the lives of Joyce and Sikhumbuzo Mtimkulu, mother and son of slain student activist Siphiwe Mtimkulu.
Ubuntu's wounds
A powerful drama about loss, grief, truth and reconciliation in contemporary South Africa. A black South African man becomes obsessed with vengeance when he meets the white ex-secret police officer responsible for his wife's death.
Time: 6.30pm
Title: Triomfeer
A classic post-94 South African renaissance story. An exile returns to collect his father's body from the grave in the yard of the policeman who shot him during the forced removals from Sophiatown in the 1950s. A film that proves how the search for spiritual rest transcends cultures.
Title: Sophia's Home Coming
After many years in Windhoek as a domestic servant, Sophia returns home to find herself a stranger to her husband, her children and her sister.
Title: The Little Girl who sold the Sun
The Little Girl who sold the Sun is about a young 12-year old paraplegic girl who begs for alms at the market with her blind grandmother.
Friday 26 September
Time: 2.30pm
Title: Mamlambo
Twelve-year-old Malusi lives on the streets of Hillbrow, where he spins the tale of Mamlambo, a magical half-human spirit that can change its form.
Title: Raya
Raya grew up in the Cape Flats, and at the age of 14 joins a brutal gang called The Killer Boys.
Title: Rhythms of Africa: Our Language, Our Music, Our City
This film explores the ways in which music has sustained the oppressed people of the city and the ways in which through music, they have been able to meet each other when apartheid tried to divide them.
Time: 6.30pm
Title: In the Flesh: Three lives in Prostitution
In India the practise of prostitution is rarely openly acknowledged and even less understood, leaving sex, workers isolated and vulnerable to human rights abuses.
Title: Rhythms of Africa: Gold, Tears and Music
This film traces the creation of marabi through to kwela and mbaqanga and explores the lives of those who made the music.
The 12 taverns that will be screening various shows at 6.30pm are: Sparks tavern, Alex Jazz Joint, Maize Bar, Tsi's Coffee Bar, Boulevard, Stella's Tavern, Lethabong, Man's Tavern, Murphy's Place, Easy's Place, SSS Bar and Shangrilla.
For more information contact Desmond Mthembu at the Film Resource Unit on 011 838 4280 or 082 791 7792.
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