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 Africa’s 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 foundation’s chief executive, John Samuel, said: “What we’re 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.”