 | It was a rather chilly Friday night but that didn’t stop the Johannesburg hipsters from coming out to look at each other in the city’s sexiest dirt pot, Maboneng. More specifically the plaid shirt and sneaker crowd were there to see the Cassette documentary, Who Do You Trust? at The Bioscope. We know Cassette right? We know them from their hit song ‘Who Do You Trust?’ and that retro black and white video. We know them from ‘Sometimes’ and ‘Tracy’. But ...read more |
Savage Industry
Tuesday, November 27th, 2012 by Dorothy Mhone
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Skyfall
Thursday, November 15th, 2012 by Kavish Chetty
 | Superheroes are becoming instructively aware of their own mortality. As the great, arcing Empire of masculinity slithers into its twilight phase – its invulnerability ruined; its omnipotence in shards – so too do the manly agents who drew power from its mythos find themselves weaker, preyed-upon and ravaged by centuries of a drugged-up phallocentrism that cannot hold. The James Bond of Skyfall finds himself in the murk of similar crisis. In Sam Mendes’ latest incarnation, trilogising the craggy Daniel Craig, ...read more |
Worker of Wonders
Wednesday, October 31st, 2012 by Don Pinnock
 | Eugene Marais was such a profound but complex character that it must have taken considerable courage for Katinka Heynes to bring him back to life in the film Die Wonderwerker (currently showing at both Ster Kinekor and Nu Metro cinemas). That she has, magnificently, is a tribute to years of planning – and still the film deals with only a few months of his long but tortured life. ...read more |
I Represent Africa
Thursday, September 20th, 2012 by Ts'eliso Monaheng
 | “Hey Zuluboy, take my phone and call me later.” Silence. ”I’m in town, take my phone and call me later…” My eavesdropping ceases and the conversation trails away. Didier Awadi is on his phone, and Zuluboy is on the other end of the line. We are in Joburg, and have taken a detour from our schedule to explore the Black Music exhibition happening at the Museum Africa in Newtown. An African hip hop documentary which screened in one of the adjoining rooms showed ...read more |
Bully
Tuesday, August 28th, 2012 by Andy Davis
 | If you look closely at Filmmaker Lee Hirsch’s face you’ll notice his nose is kind of squiff. It bends off to the left. When he was 13 years old, an older, bigger kid at school, who had often beaten up on Lee, spun around and clocked him, breaking his nose. He describes his memories of being bullied as, “acutely memorable. Painfully timeless.” Little did he know at the time, but this act of violence, one of many suffered over his ...read more |
The African Cypher
Friday, August 17th, 2012 by Brandon Edmonds, images by Filipa Domingues
 | It was good to see a dog called Ella thanked in the credits of happening young film-maker Bryan Little’s vivid and sincere new documentary about township street dance, “The African Cypher”. Mahala used to share office space in Little’s offbeat production company Fly on the Wall, he made the definitive Fokofpolisiekar film, which once got him into a masterclass with Werner Herzog in New York, it pays to get it done people, and Ella was one of the best things ...read more |
This Must Be The Place
Monday, July 30th, 2012 by Brandon Edmonds
 | Coming to America can really make or break a director. It was a perfect fit for Hitchcock, Lang and Polanski (until he got handsy with a lolita in Jack Nicholson’s hot tub) while Joseph Losey and Stanley Kubrick (famously turning Pinewood studios into New York in “Eyes Wide Shut”) got the hell out of there. Poor Orson Welles probably should have done the same. Bergman, Godard and Kurosawa never shot in the Land of the Free and that may be ...read more |
The Slow Films
Friday, July 27th, 2012 by Brandon Edmonds
 | I remember how Michael Jackson’s glove with the cut-off fingers, that look, spread through my primary school in the 1980s. The early adopter was a guy called Kenny (we should have killed him). He got music magazines from overseas thanks to a loving aunt in Tottenham who sent them to him religiously. A tactical advantage the equivalent of uncapped broadband today. Kenny was way ahead of the rest of us and showed up at a school disco with the glove. ...read more |
Amour
Wednesday, July 25th, 2012 by Brandon Edmonds
 | There’s a moment in the opening of Michael Haneke’s prize-winning new film Amour that kills me. It may be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Human and life-affirming and the absolute incarnation of love. But you have to experience this wrenching, harrowing film to want to cling to that moment once it’s done – only knowing the horror of what comes after makes the moment as overwhelming as it is. I’ll tell you what it is at the end. ...read more |
Outside Satan
Monday, July 23rd, 2012 by Brandon Edmonds
 | 87% of Americans believe angels exist. Idiots. In Outside Satan, tres cool French director, Bruno Dumont, whose drifty overlong 29 Palms has the best surprise male rape in cinema, gives the awful EU the debased avenging angel it so richly deserves. A stubby bow-legged drifter (David Dewaele) who sleeps rough and has the smooshed, runty face of a very bad boxer. He’s trash, really. A gypsy. Drinks beer, boinks backpackers and literally sucks malefic spirits from the throats of pre-adolescent ...read more |
