Perhaps inspired by the documentary, German director Stefanie Sycholt came to the city in 2001 and wrote and directed Malunde about a wiry 11-year old street kid trying to survive on the streets of Hillbrow who inadvertently hooks up with a former Defence Force soldier who saves him from gangsters. The result is a South African road movie with heart that spoke about re-conciliation and pulled the heartstrings without being dogmatic or overtly sentimental.
Oliver Schmitz’s Hijack Stories, made in the same year, was a snappily directed, entertaining and exciting movie about life in contemporary Johannesburg that played as an understated dark comedy whilst saying some very pertinent things about the worlds of the new upwardly mobile black middle-class versus that of township criminals – both lifestyles that thrive on glamour. In it Tony Kgoroge plays an actor who lives comfortably in the northern suburbs who has to return to Soweto in order to pick up enough ghetto street smarts in order to land a plum gangster role in a new TV series. Filled with great dialogue courtesy of dissident poet Lesego Rampolokeng who co-wrote the film, Schmitz injects a comic spirit into a simple story that makes a caustic observation of class distinctions and the new social divide making up life in the highveld in post-apartheid South Africa.
In 2003 Canadian director Bronwen Hughes was a surprising but astute choice to direct Stander the action-thriller based on the true-story of one of the country and Gauteng’s most infamous criminals Andre Stander, a homicide/robbery police captain who became a notorious bank robber in the mid-1980s. He and his gang would rob as many as four banks a day, and he would return to work sometimes investigating his own crimes within hours of committing them. With Hollywood star Thomas Jane doing a serviceable job as the Robin Hood-like anti-hero, this irony-tinged heist drama is especially notable for its visual style – Johannesburg is given a distinct look through the bleached colour imagery and heavy use of filters. Being an outsider Hughes and her crew where quick to notice what makes the city unique, she said, “When we arrived and started doing location recces, we saw things in the architecture that the local scouts didn’t even realise were there, the curved lines, the structures of government buildings, all the ceramic walls – visually it’s a unique city and I wanted to explore that in the style of the picture.”
Teddy Mattera’s feature film debut Max and Mona in 2004 took the classic tale of small town boy comes to the big city to a bright new comic level. It followed the fortunes of a country bumpkin who has inherited a talent as a professional mourner – he can reduce the stoniest heart into a flood of tears. Max, however, has to follow his calling to study medicine in Johannesburg; but once there he cannot pay his fees in time and, on top of this, he is saddled with a complaining sacred goat, called Mona. Max tries to get money from his Uncle Norman, a shady township character. His uncle agrees but only if Max helps out for ill gotten gains at various city funerals with his god-given talents. Naïve in style and tone this comic-fable did feature low-level crime but above all it is a touching tale about finding fortune and eventually true love in Jozi.
In the same year Zola Maseko took a look back at Johannesburg in the 1950s and the landmark history of Drum magazine and the destruction of Sophiatown in his feature Drum. The film featured American star Taye Diggs who, although very muscled, did a fine job as real-life journalist Henry Nxumalo one of the magazine’s leading journalists who tires of reporting on light-weight stuff and begins writing about apartheid atrocities which lands him in trouble with the authorities. Despite a limited budget Maseko managed to evoke the vibrant spirit of the time, honest and compassionate the film manages to educate and entertain and is a valuable document of an important time in Johannesburg’s history and a worthy companion to Lionel Rogosin’s classic 1950s film Come Back Africa which was filmed on the very streets that Maseko’s movie recreates.
2005 was a landmark year in South African film history with the production of Gavin Hood’s film adaptation of Athol Fugard’s 1960 novella Tsotsi which went on to win the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. The film updates the story to post-apartheid Johannesburg where the divisions of class have replaced racial divides and AIDS is the major threat to human life. The story revolves around a viscious thug roving the streets of Soweto and downtown Joburg impressively played by Presley Chweneyagae. He has been hardened by years of parental abandonment and his cold-blooded crimes. After beating one of his crew nearly to death Tsotsi runs away, eventually carjacking a rich woman, shooting her, and unknowingly taking off with her infant son. Captivated with the purity of spirit in the child, he is soon confronted with his own conscience, and he tries to change his criminal ways, looking to the baby as a second chance at a life of decency. With its gritty, authentic use of locations, dense panoramic lensing by talented cinematographer Lance Gewer and a hard-edged Kwaito soundtrack Tsotsi earned comparisons to the Brazilian gangster-flick City of God and with its vital, urban energy it is a seminal film about the lure and the dangers of the streets of Johannesburg.
The same year also saw Khalo Matabane’s Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon which received an equal amount of international critical acclaim. This docu-drama begins with a poet’s curiosity about a lonely Somalian woman in a Johannesburg park and expands its scope to include a look at exiles living in the city, which has become a haven for refugees from across the continent and, in fact, the world’s war-ravaged zones. Compelling and unique the movie plays like street theatre, giving a human face to the problems of xenophobia and is a valuable insight into the many lives of this thriving African city, the meaning of South African identity, and the multi-faceted nature of the African Diaspora.
In 2006 John Barker’s improvisational comedy Bunny Chow steered clear of crime, violence and politics in a realistic and very funny portrait of life in Johannesburg. The loosely structured film follows the fortunes and romantic mishaps of three stand-up comedians trying to make their way to the Oppikoppi music festival. Starring real-life comics David Kibuuka, Kagiso Lediga and Joey Rasdien it’s an engaging, ribald modestly-conceived charmer that lived up to its title – a local cuisine where the inside of a loaf of bread is scooped out and replaced with a curry of your choice – much like the melting pot that is Johannesburg.
Coming up soon is UK director Danny (Trainspotting) Boyle’s take on Jozi with the film Ponte City based on the acclaimed novel by German author Norman Ohler about an overseas visitor’s encounters with the crime and grime of the city’s infamous 54 story structure that ironically is currently going through a re-birth. The script is currently in development with funding from the UK Film Council’s Development Fund.
Ralph Ziman’s Jerusalem Entjha a tough, action thriller about a self-made Sowetan entrepreneur who climbs the Hillbrow criminal underworld ladder by becoming a slum landlord and literally hijacking whole buildings is awaiting release and is going through tweaks in post-production. The film has the byline ‘welcome to the promised land’ and by all accounts it confirms to the unfortunate genre of Johannesburg as the place where violent crime movies are made.
More promisingly is Michael J. Rix’s debut feature film Tengers, South Africa’s first full-length claymation movie. It’s a dark social satire about an out-of-work writer who wins R20 000 a month for life with a lottery scratch card – but soon his life becomes unmanageable. Although it deals with the stress and tensions that make up life in this sprawling metropolis, it is done with a unique sense of humour and is a satirical homage to what it means to be a (Gau)Tenger.
The past year has seen a slump in the production of local feature films, but the television industry is thriving. All of the country’s soap operas are set and shot in Johannesburg. The reasons are many, firstly Joburg is our great metropolis and since soapies are all about aspiration, and the sad fact is that the youth seem to share an aspiration to all be part of the metropolitan life, the soapies need to be set in the metropolis. The second reason is economic. On the rare occasions that cameras leave the studio the shooting has to be incredibly economical, where you can be pretty sure that anything you shoot within a small radius from your studio can be incorporated into your drama; so to ensure this you need to set the soap close to home.
The film industry is notorious for going through ups and downs in terms of output and no doubt more films will be made over the next few years that will have a unique angle on Johannesburg. Certainly things have changed radically since the days of the Kinetoscopes on Pritchard Street in 1895. One hundred and twelve years later Soweto has witnessed the opening of its first major shopping centre, the Maponye Mall. And alongside the major retailers is an 8-screen cinema with a total of 1,400 seats. The relationship between the movies and Jozi seems to be getting stronger with every decade.