Bubblegum Club

Tag: film

  • South African sci-fi set to take us to the edge of infinity

    Utopia is more than just a description of the ideal society but a description of who we want be. It Is a description of our understanding of the ideal state of the human being and for those who seek social change, it is the space that allows us to become the expression for our very existence.

    Utopias are best examined through the genre of Science fiction.  Brendan C Campbell, the writer, director, producer and editor for the upcoming South African Science fiction adventure, Into Infinity, would describe Utopias as “making us question our very existence and challenge everything we know. That is why it is more important that we focus  on the journey and not on the ideal. The greatest Sci fi’s that have been made have been about the journey”.

    Into Infinity is described on its online fundraiser page as “ a science-fiction adventure short film about how in order to believe in something much greater than yourself, you need to believe in yourself entirely”.

    This film focuses on the journey of the heroin Katherine “Kit” Makena who’s experienced the loss of her father as a child and in the final year of university.  She is our ‘every woman’,  an understandable young South African woman. Yet she is also a student working on a procedure that, by tapping directly into the very core of what makes us human, challenges the very same power that dehumanizes black bodies.

    Brendan discussed how their lead character was intentionally made to be relatable. She needed to be the underdog and the best way to represent this would have to be the black South African female, the most overlooked group in this country. “For me it was serendipitous that this movie it happens but also to our benefit that Fees must fall (FMF) has become such a big element of student’s speaking to power. The initial goal was suppose to be an ‘every man’. We all go through moments of oppression and needing to speak to power. We can choose to either speak up against it or keep silent. The irony is that she’s universal but specific to such moments. For me that is the power of art that even a person in Calcutta can even have the Star Wars story speak to them.”

    I love the rush of Into Infinity teaser. It’s such a mystery featuring the rush of blinding light that cuts through the darkness of what looks like space or the representation of time. The viewer is thrust at the speed of light through what looks like a wormhole as we trail the stars to a destination unknown.  This for me is what makes me so excited for the film.  Its this very excitement and feeling of wanting to know more that makers wanted the audience to feel.

    This movie will be an important one to watch for us because of how it’s very context has been so influential to the story and the production of the movie, itself. “The story is a metaphor for the film-making process. It’s about how when one challenges conventions and those control the system, sometimes there is very little power given to the story or idea – we’re too focused on how to get it made on a budget. Our heroin was made promises but ended up being lied to. This movie is from the perspective of being ignored and being side-lined by people too afraid or too busy to care.”

    Their mandate was to make specifically south African film that couldn’t be made anywhere else.  Xolelwa Ollie Nhlabatsi the movie’s Producer would mention that “We are idealists. We want to show the local unique tales and struggles. You can still tell a universal story that appeals to a wider audience, that’s evocative and at the end of the day it’s its uniqueness that brings home the heart, the charms and charisma. We want the youth to watch and be like “that’s me mother fucker”. There are so many nuances in South Africa and its what’s going to build into a genre.”

     

  • Frank Ocean- Endless Nights

    When I heard Frank Ocean’s Nostalgia Ultra for the first time in 2011, his captivating voice and dissolute lyrics were great enough.  But what really made me flip out was a line on the song ‘Novacaine’ where he (or at least its protagonist) compare themselves to Stanley Kubrick. It’s a unique mind that thinks to fit a reference to the director of Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Full Metal Jacket into a decadent RnB song. Appropriately, his first full length album, 2012’s Channel Orange, was like a series of great short films. A lot of media attention focused on Ocean’s sexuality and the autobiographical nature of the album.  Clearly songs like ‘Bad Religion’ offered accounts of unrequited love that came from a place of brutal personal experience. But much of the album saw him telling fictional tales of characters on the extremes of society, including the idle rich, Las Vegas prostitutes and jetlagged drug mules. Like all great artists, Ocean was able to imbue even his most fucked characters with humanity and pathos.

    It’s been four years since that massive achievement. Last week he broke his relative silence with the new album Blonde (or Blond, depending on which version you get). It takes a darker, dirtier direction than its predecessor.  The lyrics are more cynical, the production more paranoid.  After the critical and commercial success of Channel Orange, it would have been easy for Ocean to quickly release a crowd pleasing set of anthems. Fortunately, he has chosen to do something a lot weirder.  The album‘s hazy beats and dread guitars sound closer to underground producers like Dean Blunt and James Ferraro. For a work that apparently cost $2million to make it sounds shockingly intimate, like it was recorded in a bedroom. But unlike some of his more subterranean contemporaries, Ocean also has a classical way with hooks and choruses. Beneath all the atmosphere, ‘Self Control’, ‘Nikes’ and ‘White Ferrari’ are just wildly catchy.

    The album has been accompanied with the visual release Endless and the hefty Boys Don’t Cry zine. Included in the latter is a list of his favourite movies. If you are considering going to film school, save yourself the student debt and just watch the 200+ hours of cited work instead. The list represents a substantial cross section of the classics of world cinema. And more importantly, it highlights some of the obsessions which captivate its author. The characters in the films range from Cuban crime lords to doomed lovers, murderous Samurai to suicidal Japanese yakuza. In particular, Ocean is fascinated with the night worlds of film noir– both the classics and more contemporary offshoots (Bladerunner, Blue Velvet, LA Confidential, Spring Breakers). It makes perfect sense that he would be inspired by these visions of existential misery, smoke and rain-swept neon.

    But above all, the person on the list who seems to have the most affinity with Ocean’s aesthetic is American director Paul Thomas Anderson, whose Hard Eight, There Will Be Blood and The Master all make the cut.  They share a focus on the dark shadows cast by American success, along with similar career trajectories. Anderson’s breakout project Boogie Nights was a lovingly crafted epic about the Californian porn scene in the late 1970’s. Like Channel Orange, it finds both the humour and tragedy in its characters extreme lives. His later work has been less immediate but as rewarding. I feel the same way about Blonde as I do about The Master and There Will Be Blood. Initially, they may leave you confused or even underwhelmed. But with a bit of engagement, they lodge into your brain with powerful visions of money, religion and power. In fact, the two artists share a collaborator in Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, who both plays on the new album and has provided several of Anderson’s scores.

    Ocean  is not the only musician currently playing with cinematic decadence. The Weeknd owes a lot of his recent success to his David Lynch inspired visual image. But he is doing it better than anyone else because he plays with expectation, fantasy and narrative so well. The biggest artistic success on Blonde is ‘Nights’, which is really about three songs melted into each other. Quickly going from upbeat to sinister, it contains some of his most personal lyrics. He talks about family problems and being a Hurricane Katrina refugee.  But in the midst of such candour he adds unexpected dramatic touches, singing about driving to a recording studio as if he were some predatory figure prowling the streets, like Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler.  With the eye of an auteur, Ocean invites you into his surreal, empathetic, operatic creative universe.

  • The Foxy Five – Women forging intersectional footholds

    Staccato stabs erupt between creviced creases of the mountainous form. Backlit by blue skies, institutional columns stem forth. Symmetrical colonial stone is foregrounded by five womxn. The iconic campus of tertiary education was the site of recent student protests – a rupturing ripple that will resist all forms of erasure. The figures stand armed, in formation. Assault rifles extend from arms held high. Donned in a uniform of 70’s chic – highwaisted trousers and cropped shirts. These are The Foxy Five. A living legacy.

    Jabu Nadia Newman is redefining the terrain of identity politics in the South African context. As born-free filmmaker and founder of the The Foxy Five she has created a web series that fictions the narrative of five womxn who stand at a metaphorical crossroad – the ideological intersection between race, gender, class, sexuality and other axes of power and oppression.

    She says, “I’m interested in showing a new view of what it means to be an African, while being open to the fact that I’m still figuring it out for myself” In this way, the discourse around identity politics is emanating internally – dismantling prescriptive external boundaries.

    In depicting the lived experiences of five womxn – expressed visually through Womxn We, Blaq Beauty, Unity Bond, Femme Fatal and Prolly Plebs – Newman reclaims the space of representation – a crucial element in redefining and exploring nuanced conceptions of identity. Shifted modes of power are used in this Post-Colonial context to reimagine an alternative to a white-washed historical narrative.

    Using the rhetoric of intersectionality and “Africa for Africans” The Foxy Five march on. A powerful stance is struck; their gaze meets you head on. An assurance in position is executed with military precision. You are left only to stare down a barrel of a gun.

    “This time we’re gonna make sure we’re the ones running the shots”

    Watch episode 1 of The Foxy Five below.

    1 J.Hunkin. (2016) Janu Nadia Newman: Intersectionality with a side of pop culture. Between 10&5 http://10and5.com/2016/06/16/jabu-nadia-newman-intersectionality-with-a-side-of-pop-culture/

     

  • Imraan Christian: The Decolonizing Gaze

    Imraan Christian is a young photographer and filmmaker from the Cape Flats whose work is  capturing international attention.  After graduating from the University of Cape Town in 2014, he was on hand to document the explosive events of Fees Must Fall in October 2015. His  photographs are a powerful record of the wild days of student protest erupting across the country, with his keen eye capturing both the passion of the young protesters and the violence of the state response.  While much of the media tried to infantilise and criminalise the student’s demands, Christian lets the slogans on placards wielded by demonstrators speak for themselves.  An image captured on a march from UCT reads- ‘post-apartheid racist society says: you are poor because you are uneducated. Go get a degree! Colonial elitist universities say you are too poor to take yourself out of poverty.  # we are fucked’.  Such eloquence contrasts with the brutal images of police meeting students with tear gas, stun grenades and assault.  The establishment’s inability to understand young people is captured in a darkly humorous image of higher education minister Blade Nzimande standing behind a gate with a look of total incomprehension while a protest storms around him.

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    Christian’s powerful photographs quickly went viral on social media, and were syndicated in international publications. But these photographs are just one aspect of his artistic project. His diverse portfolio ranges from the South African Film and Television Awards nominated documentary Jas Boude (co-directed with Georgina Warner) to numerous photography projects .  This work is united by the desire to confront structural racism and inequality, and its corrosive effects on the lives of young people.  In the series Rise From The Roots, he used the fashion editorial format to ‘subvert and transcend the accepted colonial narrative of a group of black men being dangerous and/or criminals’, by showing the elegant clothes of the ToneSociety collective on the streets of Cape Town. A similar subversion occurs in Jas Boude, which follows a group of skateboarders from the dangerous Valhalla Park into the city centre.  Through the film’s intimate focus on character the spatial inequalities of Cape Town, and South Africa more generally, become glaringly apparent.  Behind the image of a gilded tourist trap, the city is characterised by catastrophic violence, poverty and trauma. The State is all too happy to have these problems contained in ‘peripheral’ spaces on the Cape Flats.  Black and coloured youth are trapped between a lack of formal opportunities, criminal stereotypes and a system eager to send them to the prison or the cemetery.  Christian is challenging this bleak picture, through both his work and career.  At a young age, he has challenged hateful typecasting of young coloured people by winning international acclaim through his sheer mastery of visual mediums.

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    His more recent projects blend political documentary and protest art. Death of a Dream is a stunning and disturbing response to state repression, in South Africa and beyond. In it, student activists are decked in funeral black. One stares at the camera with simulated bullet wound, fired by a sinister masked gunmen behind her.  The point is clear- both the physical death of young bodies, and the symbolic destruction of their hope for a better future.  The photos are staged so perfectly that the activists almost seem like mythological figures of death, their gazes drilling into the viewer’s skull.  Along with documenting contemporary South Africa, Christian’s imagery resonates with global issues of power, control and oppression.

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  • Noirwave; reflecting alternative black identities

    Noirwave is telling the story of black glory, of Africa, through art. The creative collective of Petite Noir and RhaRha Nembhard form the heart of Noirwave and their collaboration with Lina Viktor reveals the beauty and diversity of experience that is being African.

    While the immorality and brutality of imperialism perpetuates much pain and suffering on the continent, its people and geography are more than elements or victims of an imperial agenda, or beneficiaries of international aid. Africa, Africans and the African diaspora make incredible contributions to the world’s culture, colour and creativity. From the Americas to Europe and the islands through which black people are positioned, we make the music that the world dances and drones too. And while our images are often used against us, the beauty of black people, the potency that melanin projects is undeniable, despite the hegemonic mission to make mockery of it.

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    Blackness progressively makes strides, against the forces that oppress and divide us. And as black people continue claiming our right to be ourselves without apology, there are black artists working to create reflections of blackness and Africa that are based in a perspective that educates and empowers. Enter Noirwave, a movement and collective making strides  towards progressive representation and integration of black identities. Synthesizing politics, art, fashion and music to tell a story about the incredible beauty of Africa and the diversity of experience black people exist in on the continent and beyond.

    Noirwave breaks the boundaries between the stereotypes and archetypes of Africa, projecting images that are progressive and positive. Africanness and blackness are not monolithic constructions of colonialism but shifting, complex identities and cultures that are also subject to the influence of the internet and form an important part of the international community. All of the above should go without saying, but the hegemonic powers that determine what we see and hear and consume would erase this unalterable truth if they could.

    In 2015, Petite Noir, RhaRha Nembhard and Lina Viktor produced images and sounds that subverted the status quo and offered a view of blackness that reflected Africa, Europe, America and Asia, that vivified the experience of walking the world in black skin while being a global citizen, reflecting the progressive forces that are working to unify humanity, as well as the historic fact that Africa is the home of humanity.  The video for Best, touches on the striking and emotive themes encapsulated in La Vie est Belle, Petite Nior’s critically acclaimed debut album. The artwork and music video for the album are rooted in Africa and use influences from artists and cultures the world over to tell their story. Noirwave offers the world beautiful music and visuals to enjoy and admire from a creative consciousness that upholds black beauty and promotes black love. The importance of these ideals cannot be underestimated in a world that tries to erase and divide us. So the struggle continues with new sights and sounds to take us into a noir future.

  • Jas Boude- Taking Over The Streets

    The short film Jas Boude (2014) has recently been blowing up online.   Directed by Georgina Warner & Imraan Christian, the documentary details a day in the life of a group of young skaters from Valhalla Park on the Cape Flats. In just 13 minutes the film weaves slick skating footage of the 20SK8 collective with pointed commentary on social inequality.

    Valhalla Park is plagued by gang violence and drug addiction, fuelled by the desperation of poverty and the legacy of Apartheid segregation. The severity of violence drives the narrative as the local skate park is simply too dangerous to use most of the time, meaning that the crew has to travel to the Cape Town CBD. The contrast is stark, with the film highlighting the separation between the comparatively wealthy urban core and the poor surrounding areas.  Skating allows the crew to feel like they are ‘taking over the streets’ in a world where ‘the infrastructures were never designed for us’.  But this sense of freedom is constantly interrupted by overzealous security guards and suspicious residents.  These contradictions are evidenced in their visit to the Gardens skate park, situated under a freeway. While the city government presents this space as an act of charity, the skaters note that it was actually installed to keep out the homeless people who used to sleep there.

    The crew returns to Valhalla Park, and to the harsh realities of life.  As with many impoverished areas in South Africa, violence and despair is compounded by lack of basic services. In 2014, for example, protests broke out after residents had been without electricity for eight months. Against such a context it would have been easy for the filmmakers to make an overly didactic work. Fortunately, they take a more subtle approach, using character narration, smooth editing and a propulsive soundtrack to tell the story. The brutalities of existence are ever present- from newspaper headlines detailing murders to stray allusions in the dialogue. But what makes the film truly memorable is the focus on how its protagonists use skateboarding to attain a sense of freedom and purpose.

  • Happiness is a Four-letter word’s box office success shows us that South Africans want to watch their own stories

    Something big is happening in the popular culture today. There is the demand and support for woman in the lead. Though much of Hollywood has been pushing for such content with inclusion of speaking woman-parts in male dominated franchises such as super hero films and series, we are slowly seeing the re-emergence of black woman as the starring characters.

    With the popularity of shows such as Scandal, “How” to “Get” “Away” with “murder” and What’s wrong with Mary Jane we are seeing black woman taking the plot forward, no longer relegated to the role of domestic worker, slave or sassy best friend.

    The success of such shows not only shows that there is such a demand in popular Western entertainment for the stories of black woman but also how such genres are actually profitable to the male dominated broadcast companies.

    Happiness is a Four-letter word shows how this is also becoming true for the South African film Market. The film, based on the successful novel of the same name by Nozizwe Jele, follows the life of three friends, Nandi (Mmabatho Montsho), Zaza (Khanyi Mbau) and Princess (Renate Stuurman) as they deal with careers, relationships, families and spa treatments. These are woman well established in their careers. Each has their own relationship complications combined with other pressures, these woman show that it’s hard having it all.

    Though much of the film is heavily stylized there seems a desperate urgency, on the part of the creators, to point out how successful and fashionable these ladies truly are. Yet its the soft narration and sharp banter that shows how this film, that doesn’t take itself to seriously, goads the audience to be apart of these woman’s lives.

    The film represents the need to tell the other side of black lives, a side that is often heavily criticized as being materialistic and even superficial. We are facing a time where the ideals of black people must also be represented and are seeing the emergence of the successful black woman with her finances in order. She has the house, the car and a bevy of suitors to choose.  Such representations of material security shows a greater need to understand what it is that South Africans aspire to but also what they seek to escape towards.

    We are seeing Black woman as in their ideal, fabulous and powerful, yet still having to deal with the complexity that comes with living in the modern age. As we see these woman in their various professional fields we are given the opportunity to discuss what it is that black lives are actually fighting for. Is it enough to just exercise our power as woman, to choose the man we want or should we also be looking at the impact of those very desires to the people around us.

    Happiness is a Four-letter word makes us ask what it means to have agency as black woman. The film shows us that material gains are not enough when it comes to matters of the heart and friendship. It forces us to deal with the further complexities that come with being woman of the modern age juggling career and intimacy, showing us that the two are not often so easy to keep separate.

    This is a film for those who want to loose themselves in the ideal but also makes us cognisant of what we want for ourselves as black people and black woman. Here the feminist slogan of the personal becoming the political come into play as we are forced to deal with the every day “sticky” situations of asserting our agency as black woman.  In doing we also acknowledge that we cannot always be the strong ones and that what is most needed is the love and support from the bonds that we create for ourselves.

    In the film Princes later gives her best advice to Nandi, “You figure it out….and then you fight for it”.  We have to deal with the complexities of what it means to be a black, woman and feminine.  These are the very questions that will help us decide what is it that we are exactly striving for as Black South Africans.

  • Riky Rick releases Exodus, the final piece of his Family Matters project

    Riky Rick’s Exodus is out online; the short film dropped on the rapper’s website today. It provides the finale for Family Values, visually exploring a story of struggle and redemption with intricate production and a stirring score. The film is 9 minutes, and takes the viewer on an emotional journey through reflecting historic rap themes of loss and rebellion, Tupac and the oft treacherous path into young manhood.

    The film was directed by Kyle Lewis, watch it below.