CHAPPIE is a cross between Pinicchio and ROBOCOP with a dash of DISTRICT 9. That last is unsurprising because CHAPPIE is the brainchild of Neill Blomkamp, and many of the elements at work in that earlier film about the meaning of humanity are at work in this one. The battleground is still South Africa, Blomkamp’s… Read More »
TSOTSI
With TSOTSI, Gavin Hood has taken the liberty of updating the timeframe of South African writer Athol Fugard’s only novel. In doing so, the politics of apartheid that spurred the story in the book has given way to the tragedy of AIDS. Changing the circumstances of its title character’s orphaning, though, doesn’t affect the nature of… Read More »
Rodriguez & Malik Bendjalloul — SEARCHING FOR SUGARMAN
The story behind SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN is a textbook definition of truth being stranger that fiction. A Mexican-American singer/songwriter with a social conscious and a unique definition of success inspires a generation of South Africans to rebel against Apartheid with his music. The twist, he has no idea he’s famous there, and his fans… Read More »
Gavin Hood Tells the Story of TSOTSI
Gavin Hood felt that there was more than just an Oscar ™ riding on the success of TSOTSI, based on the novel by Athol Fugard and South Africa’s official entry for the 2005 Best Foreign Film Academy Award ™. It’s one of the many things we talked about when I interviewed him on February 10, 2006. … Read More »
Connie Field Asks HAVE YOU HEARD FROM JOHANNESBURG? APARTHEID AND THE CLUB OF THE WEST
Connie Field started from scratch in putting together her six-part documentary, HAVE YOU HEARD FROM JOHANNESBURG. Undaunted, she set about assembling an archive of first-person narratives about apartheid at home and abroad in South Africa. When we spoke on October 30, 2007, she discussed how the 2000+ hours of interviews and footage would be made available to scholars,… Read More »