South African Film Festival (SAFF) returns this month, with a stellar program.
This year’s festival, from 07 – 24 May, features a diverse program of 21 South African films, a 21 film salute! – mostly hard-hitting documentaries mingled with short films, and a beautifully shot eco-horror extravaganza.
The festival opens with NOBODY’S DIED LAUGHING, a portrait of Pieter-Dirk Uys, whose alter ego, Evita Bezuidenhout, is rather like the South African equivalent to Dame Edna.
In a career that has endured and endeared him to millions, Pieter-Dirk Uys abseils down the face of the absurd state sanctioned segregation, the equally absurd hysteria over AIDS and the falsehoods and fallacies that plague all prejudices and bigotries.
His mother, an accomplished pianist, escaped Nazi Germany to migrate to South Africa. Regrettably, she suicided, and he became estranged from his father. Less regrettably, Pieter-Dirk reconciled posthumously with father.
Anti-Apartheid campaigner, AIDS awareness campaigner, Gay Rights campaigner, he is an educator as well as an entertainer, a mentor and a mediator.
The film is a show and tell of his work, him showing us present and archival footage, others telling us of his contributions to the cultural well being of his country. Among those telling about their appreciation are fellow South African luminaries, Desmond Tutu, Janet Suzman and Charlize Theron. Another fan interviewed is Sophia Loren who reciprocates Pieter-Dirk’s early admiration for the famous film star.
NOBODY’S DIED LAUGHING opens the festival and it’s a fabulous choice.
Another documentary of note is DANCE ME TO THE END OF TIME, a deeply moving, incredibly candid chronicle of cancer treatment, DANCE ME TO THE END OF TIME is a courageous and honest documentary made by the partner of the person diagnosed.
Award-winning South African filmmaker Melanie Chait documented the last four years of her life-partner, theatre director Nancy Diuguid’s life, as she fought breast cancer. Woven into Nancy’s personal story are insights from US scientist and ecologist Rachel Carson, whose seminal book, ‘Silent Spring’ exposed the health dangers of pesticides as far back as 1962.
The images of crop dusters to begin the film and the reason becomes chillingly clear when we are informed that Nancy grew up on a tobacco farm in Kentucky in the USA, where small planes regularly sprayed the fields with toxic pesticides.
There was of course a social toxicity prevailing in Kentucky at the time, white supremacy and a hatred of homosexuality. Not only did Nancy come out as a lesbian but, with Melanie, adopted a black child.
This excellently crafted story is also a tribute to an extraordinarily strong woman.
Feature film fiction is well represented in the gorgeously shot GAIA, a cautionary tale of being careful not to mess with Mother Nature.
The film opens on a couple of national park rangers paddling up a river snaking through a primordial forest. It’s a pristine paradise, but the camera turns the image upside down and soon the world of these two people is turned upside down and inside out. They are separated and the female in search of her male partner encounters two survivalists following a post-apocalyptic lifestyle. The boy and his philosophical father seem to have their own religion, and a mysterious relationship to nature.
Suspicion and scepticism are squashed when the three are attacked by blind, cabbage headed humanoids, who give the term “vegetated state” a perverse run for its etymology.
More than just a celebration of cinematic art, SAFF is a festival with a conscience! All profits from the festival go to supporting the vital work of Education without Borders (EwB), a not-for-profit that is changing the lives of disadvantaged and at-risk youth in Cape Town.
Visit the SAFF website at www.saff.org.au.