One of Africa’s oldest film gatherings, the Durban International Film Festival (DIFF), opened on a very inspiring note on Thursday night and will be on till July 27. Assistant Life Editor, TERH AGBEDEH, who is in South Africa to participate in the Talents Press component of the 35th edition of the festival, reports…
Jahmil Qubeka (in front) at the announcement of the Film and Publication Board’s classification refusal of his film, Of Good Report, which was to open the 34th Durban International Film Festival to two packed cinemas last year in Durban, South Africa.
Only 20 years ago, it would have been a huge challenge to stage a fiesta like the Durban International Film Festival (DIFF) in South Africa, which was before then under the apartheid system of government.
One does not need to have experienced it to imagine what it would have been like. What films would be screened there, for instance? Can people from other countries on the continent attend? Would films starring black and white actors be screened? These are some of the questions that would have come up. But this did not deter founders of the 35-year-old festival from going on.
However, like AB Musa of the 75-year-old Avalon Group, which co-founded the festival and has provided space for screening the films, things have changed. Indeed, DIFF this year is celebrating, like all of South Africa, 20 years of democracy. As could be gleaned from the opening film directed by Zee Ntuli, Hard to Get, there are now more opportunities, particularly for black South Africans, to aspire to whatever they intend to do. Many of them are taking advantage of the new opportunities.
“It is such a wonderful feeling as we sit together in the rainbow nation of South Africa 20 years into our democracy, and soon we will see a movie that has been produced by a local person,” Musa said before the screening of Hard to Get at Suncoast Cinemas. It turned out to be a humorous and interesting action film.
Afterwards, there was a party at the Havana next door where guests mingled and danced into the night.
But the wonderful feeling Musa mentioned in his speech was not just about living in a free South Africa; it was also about being part of a well-organised event, which had a lot of excited speakers. Among them were officials from the University of Kwazulu-Natal, whose Centre for Creative Arts organises the fest. There were also officials from the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), KwaZulu-Natal Department of Economic Development and Tourism, KwaZulu-Natal Film Commission, City of Durban, German Embassy, Goethe-Institut, Industrial Development Corporation, KwaZulu-Natal Department of Arts and Culture, and Gauteng Film Commission, who are all supporters of the event.
The festival will focus on 40 South African feature-length films and 38 short films, most of them receiving their world premieres on Durban screens, and collectively representing by far the largest number of South African films in the festival’s 35-year history.
Hard to Get, for instance, is a feature debut from Ntuli, who is acclaimed for his short films. It is the story of the mercurial relationship between a handsome young womaniser and a beautiful, reckless petty criminal and is fuelled by a bewitching visual poetry.
Other high profile South African films being showcased include the engaging thriller, Cold Harbour Between Friends, which recounts a reunion between old varsity friends; Hear Me Move, a locally flavoured dance movie; and Love the One You Love, which explores a constellation of relationships between young South Africans.
Then there’s the Tyler Perry-flavoured Two Choices, as well as The Two of Us, which tells of a relationship between two siblings. Icehorse is a mystery drama set in the Netherlands and directed by South African Elan Gamaker. Young Ones, a sci-fi flick, is directed by Jake Paltrow, produced by Spier Films and shot in South Africa, while the French/South African co-production, Zulu, looks at the unhealed wounds of the new South Africa.
There is also the 1978 film, Joe Bullet, the first work to benefit from the Gravel Road legacy project, which aims to restore films lost during apartheid.
An expanded South African documentary programme also features the large number of high quality ‘doccies’ currently being produced in the country. DIFF 2014 includes a rich slate of films which explore and interrogate 20 years of freedom and democracy in South Africa, including Khalo Matabane’s Nelson Mandela: The Myth and Me, and Miners Shot Down, Rehad Desai’s account of Marikana. They are joined by many other films that chronicle lesser known but no less significant stories behind the end of apartheid and the rebirth of South Africa into a new country.
There is also a rich programme of films from other places on the continent like Bloody Beans, which recounts the Algerian revolution using a band of young children as its medium of expression, and the super-low-budget Ethiopian vampire film, Beti and Amare.
Timbuktu from Malian master, Abderrahmane Sissako, which recounts Timbuktu’s brief occupation by militant Islamic rebels is DIFF’s acknowledgement of the political reality of contemporary Africa. Other films in this category are: They Are the Dogs, set in Morocco in the aftermath of the Arab Spring; and semi-autographical, Die Welt, set in Tunisia shortly after the recent Jasmine Revolution. Imbabazi: The Pardon explores the possibilities of reconciliation in the wake of the Rwandan genocide; and Difret examines the potentially destructive role of patriarchal traditions in contemporary Ethiopia.
White Shadow, which is set in Tanzania, tells the story of a young albino boy named Alias, who is targeted for body parts by muti traders. Veve, the latest film from the producers of the award-winning crime drama, Nairobi Half Life, documents the double-crossing lives of those trading in khat or ‘veve’, a mildly narcotic local crop. From Moroccan director, Abdellah Taia, comes Salvation Army, a study of a young Arab man grappling with notions of family and sexuality. Then there is Half of a Yellow Sun, an adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s book of the same title.
Coz Ov Moni 2: FOKN Revenge, billed as ‘the world’s second first pidgin musical’ is a Ghanaian hip-hop opera from rap duo, the FOKN Bois; while B for Boy tells the story of how a Nigerian woman’s life is corrupted by the forces of patriarchy and tradition.
The festival includes more than 200 theatrical screenings and a full seminar and workshop programme, as well as the Wavescape Film Festival, Wild Talk Africa Film Festival and various industry initiatives, including the 7th Talents Durban (in cooperation with the Berlinale Talents) and the fifth Durban FilmMart co-production market (in partnership with the Durban Film Office).