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Jonny Coyne, Damon Shalit and Chella Ferrow in the gritty African Gothic, based on Reza de Wets work, Diepe Grond.
THE opening weekend of the Durban International Film Festival was an organisational fiasco. The number of abandoned screenings – whether for “technical” or other reasons – is not acceptable.
As for the technical issues, the excuses trotted out have been lame.
If Ster-Kinekor theatres have only recently converted to digital playback, then the organisers should have known about it and made sure the “teething problems” were sorted out before the festival.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the decision to ban Of Good Report – and people have been awfully quick to form opinions without seeing the movie – the festival’s procedure of submitting films to the Film and Publication Board needs to be improved.
The situation cried out for some proper forward planning. A meeting with the board to establish protocols and timelines would surely have prevented some of last weekend’s chaos.
Whatever your views, one thing is certain: what took place over the the first four days of the festival must never be allowed to happen again.
Now for some mini-reviews of films to be screened again.
Of considerable local interest is Andrew Worsdale’s Durban Poison (Sneddon, 6pm, tomorrow), loosely based on the murderous exploits of South Africa’s own “Bonnie and Clyde” couple, Pieter Grundlingh and Charmaine Phillips, in the mid-1980s.
Brandon Auret is disturbingly convincing as the Grundlingh character while Cara Roberts, in her first major film role, is well cast as his girlfriend. The film, much of it shot in Durban, shifts back and forth between the police investigation (following the arrest) and an account of the couple’s drug-fuelled relationship and the murders they committed.
There is, I suppose, a kind of twisted, low-rent glamour in this otherwise sordid tale of trailer-trash whites in an environment reeking of dagga, drink, sex and violence.
Worsdale, who has brooded over this film for more than two decades, has fashioned a gritty slice of South Africana that includes cameos from Marcel van Heerden and Danny Keogh and features an original soundtrack by Jim Neversink.
Another local film, the aptly-named African Gothic (Suncoast C, 6pm, Thursday), is a powerful adaptation of the late Reza de Wet’s play Diepe Grond.
The setting is a dilapidated farm in the Free State occupied by a tormented brother and sister (convincingly played by Damon Shalit and Chella Ferrow) who are haunted by their twisted childhoods and act out various scenarios from the past. One day, they receive a visit from a lawyer in which their fate, and that of their farm, is to be determined.
The film is awash with symbolism, the central characters are far too handsome and the decision to “open out” the play for cinematic purposes is questionable (it dilutes the necessary claustrophobic atmosphere). Nevertheless, De Wet’s Freudian drama is a rapier to the heart of a certain kind of apartheid-based Afrikanerdom.
Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio (Suncoast B, 4.15pm, Sunday) is a brilliantly achieved horror film, of a type, about the gradual mental disintegration of a nerdy English sound engineer (an outstanding performance by Toby Jones) working on an Italian exploitation movie in the 1970s. The film, a superb exposition of just what goes into making a certain kind of soundtrack, is ideal fare for those with an eye, and an ear, for art cinema. Mainstream it is not.
Two more films to see: Ken Loach’s documentary The Spirit of ’45 (Suncoast A, 6pm, today) and Ian Roberts’ Everyman’s Taxi ( Suncoast A, 5.30pm, tomorrow). A third film, which sadly doesn’t have another screening, is the heart-warming Wadjda, a charming, witty and mildly feminist take on harshly patriarchal life in Saudi Arabia. Try to get it on DVD. – The Mercury
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