music city - Cape Town Partnership

Neo Muyanga
CAPE SOUND ON THE SILVER SCREEN
MUSIC CITY
Creative Week Cape Town has partnered with Encounters
Documentary Film Festival and the Cape Film Commission
to bring you a mini-documentary festival focused on music.
Included in the programme are some sell-out productions
from previous film festivals, and each screening is preceded
by University of Cape Town film and media student work.
10
Saturday
10 September
Afrikaaps
Afrikaaps,
the film and stage play, breaks
ground by boldly attempting to reclaim Afrikaans – so long considered a language of the oppressor
11
Sunday
11 September
Sathima’s
Windsong
12
Monday
12 September
13
Tuesday
13 September
The Black
A wacky take
on the geography of apartheid
in Cape Town. Using the Black
of a close friend, the filmmaker
River as both metaphor and
explores Devious’ life, and the
embodiment of separation and
future of his legacy that now
displacement, this film constructs
lies with his young widow and
a poetic tableaux of water and
mother of his three children,
sound to convey how the city’s
Natalie.
musical traditions, often markers
of ethnic identity, reinforce
Fokofpolisiekar:
Forgive them for they
know not what they do
the ghettoisation of culture or
serve to bring people together. It
includes interviews, backstage
banter and live concert footage of
In-your-face progressive punk
musicians ranging from kwaito
– as a language of liberation. It
Sathima’s Windsong is a lyrical
rock band Fokofpolisiekar are
stars and Brenda Fassie to right-
does this by foregrounding alter-
portrait of the life of South Af-
the subject of this spirited look at
wing Christian punk rockers.
native histories of the creole birth
rican jazz singer Sathima Bea
Directed by John W
Fredericks (South Africa,
2005), 48 minutes
15
Thursday
15 September
Casa del
Musica
Cape Town and Havana may lie
longitudes apart, but both are
Directed by Eddie Edwards
(South Africa, 2002),
45 minutes
Benjamin. Shot in New York and
Cape Town, it is a celebration of
Benjamin’s work, a meditation
14
on jazz and diaspora. Much like
her haunting song, Windsong,
melting pot ports where sailors,
soldiers, traders and slaves
have created a fabulous mix of
Wednesday
14 September
religions and cultures. Historian
Mr Devious:
My Life
jazz legend the late Robbie Jan-
and musician Vincent Kolbe and
sen travel from Cape to Cuba to
From the seemingly endless
explore the island’s rich musical
gang violence of Beacon Valley,
heritage and share with it some
Mitchells Plain, emerges the
of their own city’s eclectic cul-
both the contemporary Afrikaans
charismatic talent of Mario “Mr
tural treasures. The film follows
music industry and the shifting
Devious” van Rooy. Shunning the
Jansen as he takes his sax on a
the film is an eloquent medita-
cultural sands of white Afrikaans
cyclical debt of fame offered in
tour of Havana’s parks, streets,
tion on displacement, exile and
culture. The film focuses on how
Johannesburg, Devious returns to
jazz clubs and studios to meet
belonging.
the Belville band came to be a
the Cape Flats determined to use
and jam with the city’s finest
voice for the dislocated youth
his brand of hip-hop activism to
soundsmiths. The result is a high-
straddling the before-and-after of
inspire the youth at risk and offer
ly entertaining introduction to
1994, about not being old enough
a creative alternative to juvenile
Cuban music – past, present and
rigorous academic study, the pre-
to fully understand the effects of
offenders in prisons across the
future – and a deeply personal
sentation of those ideas is steeped
living under apartheid, not young
Cape. But, just as his message
account of Jansen rediscovering
in the now – conveyed by hip
enough to be entirely “new”
of non-violence is starting to
his own wellsprings of creative
hop-generation Cape Town-based
South Africans.
get through, he is killed when
inspiration.
of the language and shattering
long-existing efforts to whitewash
and purify Afrikaans. While the
ideas of the film are informed by
Directed by Daniel A Yon
(Canada/South Africa, 2009),
80 minutes
artists who school audiences with
an immediacy, irreverence and
vibrancy often frowned upon in
rescuing his father from teenage
Directed by Bryan Little
(South Africa, 2009),
108 minutes
muggers. Devastated by the loss
Directed by Johnathan de
Vries (South Africa, 2003),
52 minutes
the academy.
Directed by Dylan Valley
(South Africa, 2010),
60 minutes
10 - 15 September 2011 18h15. Tickets are R25 per screening
The Labia on Orange, 68 Orange Street. T: 021 424 5927 www.labia.co.za