Anant Singh,
South African Indian filmmaker bags top Venice award for Zulu
film on Aids
South Africa, Sep. 14, 2004
Ashok Shaw
NRI Press
SOUTH Africas first Zulu feature film, Yesterday,
was awarded the inaugural Human Rights Film Award at the Venice
International Film Festival on Friday.
Produced by Anant Singh and starring Leleti Khumalo,
the film was written and directed by Darrell James Roodt. At its
first screening in Venice last week the film, which is on circuit
locally, received a 15-minute standing ovation.
Shot in rural KwaZulu-Natal, Yesterday deals with
the role women play in a society racked by the HIV/Aids epidemic.
Khumalo, wife of Mbongeni Ngema and the star of Sarafina, plays
the lead character, Yesterday.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation, which backed the film, plans to
screen it countrywide in the next 18 months to raise awareness
about HIV/Aids. The foundations chief executive, John Samuel,
said: What were aiming to do is get this on the back
of trucks and go from village to village to show the movie, and
in the evening have discussions with the community about what
we can do.
All the themes around HIV/Aids surface without
being given in a didactic fashion. It does not preach. It is no
accident that the word Aids does not surface once
in the whole movie.
Singh said this week he was honoured
that the film had won the accolade.
Yesterday is a truly inspirational film that
pays tribute to South African women, especially the rural women
who take sole responsibility for entire households in the absence
of men who work in the cities.
He said the way HIV/Aids was subtly dealt with in
the film set it apart from others in the running for the award.
Roodt said it had been decided to shoot English and Zulu versions
of the film.
It was like chalk and cheese. We just found
that it was so much more powerful and realistic in Zulu that we
decided to dump the English version.