Celebrating movies

  Talented young filmmaker Chris dos Santos' short film AT THY CALL will be screened at the Cannes Film Festival next month. At Thy Call is one of the few films from South Africa that examines young men's experiences of the border war in our recent history. South Africa, 1984. Every white male from the age of 16 that has completed high school is conscripted into the South African National Defence force to answer their call of "National Service". Danie Joubert is a young and proud Afrikaner who'...

  The late Ousmane Sembene, one of the greatest African filmmakers, was honoured at the Cape Winelands Film Festival. The festival included a tribute to the brilliant filmmaker. M-Net's Lifetime Achievement Award was also given to Sembene. Mr A Seck, a representative from the Senegalese Filmmakers' Association received the award from M-Net's Mike Dearham.  OUSMANE SEMBENE, considered by many as the Father of African cinema passed away on 9 June 2007. Together with the Egyptian master Youssef Cha...

  Alexander Sokurov’s reputation as a purveyor of intense, “spiritual” films was sealed by Nick Cave’s article “I Wept and Wept, from Start to Finish,” about the singer’s reaction to Mother and Son . The Russian master has produced a body of work that is dauntingly prolific in range. Suppressed by the Soviet censors, admired more in France and Japan than at home, and largely unavailable in North America and South Africa, Sokurov’s films and videos range across histrionic early works banned by th...

  http://www.koreanfilm.org/kimkiduk.html

With only three feature films to his name, Carlos Reygadas (1971-) has distinguished himself as one of the most authentic, audacious and uncompromising talents in Mexican cinema today. Beginning with his extraordinary debut film, Japón , Reygadas has attempted nothing less than the reinvention of the art film, rejecting the formula driven conventions of contemporary “independent” filmmaking to create a body of work that fully unleashes the subversive power of the cinema. Fiercely unpredictable,...

A group of South African film professionals has formed a collaborative called Filmmakers Against Racism to produce a series of anti-xenophobia public service announcements (PSAs) in response to the horrific xenophobic attacks that have been raging in Gauteng’s informal settlements for more than 10 days. The group consists of Rehad Desai of Uhuru, Neil Brandt of Luma Films, Desiree Markgraaff of Bomb, Eve Rantseli of Women of the Son, Born Free Media and Xoliswa Sithole. According to Brandt, mor...

  We are almost half way through 2008. I have seen some remarkable films thus far, mostly on DVD, as well as at the 2008 Cape Winelands Film festival. They include the following new and older releases: · Silent Light/ Japon (Carlos Reygadas) · The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik) · I am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov) · There will be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson) · I’m Not There (Todd Haynes) · Time to Leave (Francois Ozon) · The Love of Siam (Chukiat Sakweerakul) ...

(Met spesiale vergunning van die skrywer en LITNET, waar die artikel oorspronklik verskyn het) Ek het 12 jaar in Johannesburg spandeer terwyl ek my voete gevind het in die vermaaklikheidsbedryf. Natuurlik was die enigste goeie ding daar die pad Kaap toe, en ek en my jong gesin het gretiglik die pad gereeld aangepak. Ons sou ook oorslaap – soms oor die kar breek; soms oor ons wou. Eendag toe ons op Victoria-Wes deur die dorp stap, sien ons ’n ou bioskoop. Ons stoot ’n agterdeur oop, en deur berg...

 LOS ANGELES (AFP) — Sydney Pollack, the prolific US director, producer and actor who helmed the Oscar-winning romance "Out of Africa" and the cross-dressing comedy "Tootsie," has died of cancer. He was 73. Pollack died Monday afternoon at his home in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, surrounded by his family, his agent Leslee Dart told AFP. He had been diagnosed with cancer nine months ago. The film-maker balanced box office success with critical acclaim over a half-century career, working with...

  One of the films at the current Africa on Screen Film Festival is Charles Burnett's Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation . It is quite a controversial feature film about Sam Nujoma.  Due to the fact that the Namibian government allocated all of its funding through the Film and Video fund to the Sam Nujoma feature shockwaves were send through the local film industry. The Filmmakers Association of Namibia (FAN) reacted by distancing itself from the massive government funding under the auspices ...

  During 2006 South Africa won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for Tsotsi . Gavin Hood’s multi-award winning drama about a township gangster has been the climax of the South African New Wave that started in 2004 and to date resulted in more than 40 international awards for local features, documentaries and shorts. Sadly the non-renewal of a special feature film fund by the Department of Arts and Culture has stifled the South African New Wave and as a result feature film production has decli...