kagablog

years after the breakup
she called me up out of the blue
and told the truth

it was about
time

It’s Catz Pyjamas at 3am
The pasta’s lousy the pizza too
I’m sitting here drunk
Thinking of you

By the way
I’m not at Catz for the food
Nor for the service
I’m here ‘cos it’s open

Bitter bitter liefde soos asyn
Het my gebreek
En ek wag vir verlossing
Ek wag vir iets soets

tonight i went looking for you at the Bo
you were not behind the counter
you were nowhere to be found
i looked inside my whiskey glass
i looked inside my mind
you were nowhere to be found
i remember when you told me not to drown
the gin in too much tonic
well babe, the double i’m drinking
is in your honour
and the double i’m pouring
is to chase it with

The thing is babe I never thought of myself as merely another contender
for your
v-shaped throne

See you’ve got me squashed between
Your Ruby and your Cypress tree, or, to
Put it another way, this heart of mine
needs to be broken in order for me
to come back again
and each time
I come back
I come back
better

Y’see time has a funny way
of always being
on time
You’ve merely got to learn
to throw away the clock

So look around you Priestess
You’re the only player on my stage
I was born to applaud every wiggle of your hips
Draw closer little angel
Let me drink your magic nectar
Straight from your perfect lips
Ah Babe I’ve got no secrets
You know I worship at your altar
You know I’m your lamb to slaughter

liewe skat ek het ure op jou sit wag
ure van die top 100 worst videos ever
my taalgebruik is ‘n vorm van ballingskap
en ek het lank gelede met dwelms gestop
maar vandag is ek byna bereid
om ‘n uitsonderings posisie te neem
no man you talk a lot of kak
here’s a hunchback
liewe skat ek het ure op jou gewag
ek is kak geselskap as ek nugter is

Ek is te moeg om te smile
Ja, regtig, ek sal dit nog een keer herhaal
Ek is te moeg
Om te sterf
Om te huil
Het jy my goed verstaan?
Ek is te moeg om te skree
Sonder jou is daar geen sonskyn
Sonder jou is daar net skaduwee
En duisternis

Ek is te moeg om hierdie gedig te skryf
Daarom bestel ek nog een drankie
Want ek is nie te moeg
Om te drink nie

i said to her
“you have to choose between the dagga and me”
so she left

Wings you gave my heart again
Wings with which to fly
You did this merely by being you
You did not have to try

This dead man came back to life
When he stared into your eyes
I am an Eagle, alone and proud,
And in my constant Soaring
I saw You, and knew you were
The One

And I have known the pain of too much
Tenderness, in the season of my giving
I witnessed my heart’s unravelling
It happened inside your eyes

My tongue is sometimes vulgar
My thoughts often unclean
But Babe you are without a doubt
The best thing I’ve ever seen

Wings you gave my heart again
Wings with which to fly
You did this merely by being you
You did not have to try

One last thing,
before I fall off your horizon
Whenever you’re in a thunderstorm
Remember this

The lightning is an image of you,

dancing

The thunder is the sound of me,

applauding

a bunch of revolutionary heroes are sitting at spiro’s
nobody knows what’s actually going on
the topic of debate is politics versus economics
kagiso grins and asks “what are we campaigning for?”
itumeleng tightens his brentwoods and yells emphatically “the beginning of the real struggle”
another round is ordered
everybody’s onto the hard tack by now
norbert from surinam is getting maudlin
“my parents were punished for speaking papiemento.”
bongani exhales slowly and deliberately, “the mother tongue”
the whole group responds: “the mother tongue”
the repetition is whispered low and grumbling
it’s a chorus from the dark side
just then lightning flash an ‘im weak heart
drop
norbert continues, “we were romanticizing the notion of liberation?”
itumeleng rejects this notion, “who is us?”
s’bu finishes his malt whiskey and orders another - “the campaign is ourselves”
itumeleng can hardly balance by now, he’s hitched his brentwoods up, his words slur themselves against the sides of his mouth,
“lejima, the collective, means a lot to me”
s’bu castigates kagiso loudly, “kagiso is trying to run away from his shadow”
kagiso retorts snappily, “ag man, blackness isn’t the issue, africanness is.”
another round of hard tack
now everybody’s mumbling and stumbling
it’s the revolutionary state of mind anno 2005
we have to come at ease with the whole thing

A few months back I followed a web link to an American website that congratulated Morgan Freeman on landing the role of Nelson Mandela in the soon to be made film about the life of Dr. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. Upon reading the article my heart sank once more. I felt like a nine year old who has been promised a date by a school bully.

This got me thinking as to what makes a good producer, is it the one who gets the funding at all-costs or the one who shares my agenda.(My agenda is the creation of South African Cinema, free from Hollywood influence yet above any in terms of storytelling).

It’s a fact that the South African film industry needs all the help it can get to grow and blossom, but at what expense should this help come. I fear the history of our film industry might be judged by the coming generations as the era of spineless sell-outs. We have time and again sacrificed great stories and great moments in history for a few dollars. From Denzel Washington in Cry Freedom, James Earl Jones and Sydney Poitier in Cry the Beloved Country, Whoopie Goldberg in Sarafina, Ice Cube and Ving Rhames in Dangerous Ground and Taye Diggs in Drum. Some might say the stories had to be told and the American funders had terms. My question is to what extent do we go to make these films. Should a film about an historical figure or an historical event be ‘given’ to foreign producers who often impose foreign actors.

The history of South Africa is littered with injustices and discrepancies. The greatest discrepancy being that of the suffocation of African languages, and thus the suffocation of African cultures and arts. I see the unbalanced trading of South African stories to American funders as a continuing trend that denies South Africans a chance to engage in their own stories, their own history. People often argue that South Africans don’t have the money to finance these films thus producers have to go overseas for dollars. A fact I am aware of but then is it an excuse to sell your country’s history? Is it worth killing a great story for the perceived box office turnout, which all these films never really achieved. I have no problem with American actors playing in South African films but I have a serious problem with my history being misrepresented by a Henry Nxumalo who can’t even pronounce his surname, a Nelson Mandela who can’t shout ‘Amandla’ and a Steve Biko who can’t greet his people in their language.

The box office figures have shown over the years that a Hollywood face does not guarantee success, in-fact these films have been disappointing as South African audiences felt short-changed. The producer –director relationship of Paul Raleigh and Gavin Hood have proven to us that South Africa has all it takes to tell a truly South African story yet make it universally relevant (Filmography: The Storekeeper, A Reasonable Man - with Vusi Kunene, Gavin Hood, Ken Gampu - and Tsotsi. all these films featured South Africa’s best acting talent).

On the other, disappointing, hand the producer-director relationship of Anant Singh and Darrel Roodt has continued to upset my stomach with culturally insulting films and American casts that assume that just by being black they can automatically play an African character, truth is I have always been disgusted by the accents and the lack of emotion in the language. (Filmography: Dangerous Ground with Ice Cube (USA), Cry the Beloved Country with James Earl Jones (USA), Sarafina with Whoopie Goldberg…sad indeed).

A fellow film student and colleague asked me who i am to pass judgement and I asked him who are they to sell my history to the highest bidder.

The worse disservice that a producer can do to the development of South African cinema is to take away the very stories that highlight our shared pain and ‘perceived victory’ and submit it to foreign powers to cut, twist and package.

for more information click onto the africa in motion website

A presentation by Zayd Minty on the cultural centre Doula’art in Cameroon, and the impact it makes on the city of Doualla through its urban transformation agenda.

Ismail Farouk and Alan Mabin will respond connecting this experience with the urban context of Johannesburg and South Africa

The presentation will be preceded by a walk between Joubert Park and Drill Hall led by Ismail Farouk. (Meet at 17h15 in the JAG parking lot front entrance)

Including an introduction to “Citizen – What are Your Concerns?”
A collaborative cultural partnership project by Johannesburg Art Gallery
and Bildmuseet (Sweden) addressing human concerns in public space.

Date: Wednesday 31 October 2007
Time: 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Venue: Johannesburg Art Gallery
Ampitheatre (downstairs)

71

What the spectacle offers as eternal is based on change and must change with its base. The spectacle is absolutely dogmatic and at the same time cannot really achieve any solid dogma. Nothing stops for the spectacle; this condition is natural to it, yet completely opposed to its inclination.

His skin is soft and oily. It’s weird, he’s malnourished for sure, but he’s oily. Sometimes I wonder if that’s just the drugs and stale greasy food coming out of his pores. He’s never hungry and if he is, he always wants fast food, French fries and fried chicken, mashed so he doesn’t have to hurt his teeth chewing. It’s not a big deal to mash up food for him. People act like it is, but it isn’t really. If he had his wisdom teeth pulled, or a root canal, or something like that, I’d have to mash his food for him for a while. I mean I know it’s not the same, but love is love, right? That’s how I feel on a good day, like it comes with the package, like it’s all part of loving him. I can do it sometimes. Sometimes I feel strong enough to, other times I think I need space.

My fingers slide when I touch his arms.

If I licked his skin, I wonder if I’d get high. The body probably always tries to get rid of poisons, but for an addict it’s different. It’s like his body has become it’s own drug factory, reproducing what it’s already used. He smells like chemicals, like something artificial, but he feels soft, and his eyes are soft, like Droopy Dog’s in that cartoon. He’s not sad most of the time, it’s just that his eyes are deep set, and he has trouble focusing them sometimes, so he stares at the floor or the wall, and people think he’s sad. I know him so I know that’s not true. I know he sees a drug councilor who he sometimes lies to, but sometimes he tells her the truth, and then she helps him. Sometimes he lets her help.

Most of the time, he doesn’t let me do anything, which hurts so much, because if anyone knows him, I do, and if anyone could help it’s me, but he doesn’t want it, and it seems like there’s nothing I can do so I just accept it. I just let him do what he wants, and I try to be there, so he doesn’t let me go. He has these long slender fingers, and sometimes he makes me feel like a grain of sand, insignificant and tiny, like I could slip through them at any second. I want to be part of his life forever, and part of his next life. I want to believe him when he says he loves me, I want to believe that he’s in control of what he’s doing, that he knows what’s good for him. More than anything, I want to believe that we’re meant to be together, in this life, right now. Believing that helps me to breathe, it helps me feel like my life has meaning, like he might just survive this stage, these drugs, and that this whole thing could be a stupid story we tell our kids one day about our wild youth. My friends have less and less patience for me though. I know the truth; they think I’m an idiot.

ELECTRONIC DEMOCRACY.
• An overview of SA Film Industry Fragmentation.

The starvation of project development processes has ushered forth an advent of skills-for-sale attitude that transudes in the industry’s work force, and many factors have been both cause and effect of this weakness. First, there is a lack of effective processes of weeding out projects with no realistic prospect of social relevance and commerciality – result, lack of capital for reinvestments in project development for future productions. Cabals form in the midst of this cultural stagnation, with mushrooming sects proclaiming auteurist tendencies, multiple production houses seeming to monopolize marginal genres in the name of their universal appeal. Fragmented practices/mechanisms of identity expression ensue, falsifications occur for the sake of commercial palatability, and other detrimental individualisms begin to take hold of the sector to an extend that it solely becomes a platform for personal enrichment. Cinema for Profit.

The concern is on the part of benefit from such exclusive ventures going elsewhere, than towards a collective wealth of cultural information, but to other bodies intrinsic in production links. The term ‘production’ from my perspective involves the creation of a whole value added in a film project, inclusive of the costs of doing business. In any industry, the true cost of value added includes the cost of equity and debt and those costs of services such as legal, financial which are critical to the business of creating film projects. But such merits have been eroded by self-centered producer/artist sentiments fueled by the craving for capital affluence. Most of the ventures undertaken under these Cinema-for-Profit merits are signified by nepotistic collaborations, financial mismanagements, and overall leakages which tend to be the fatal blows when completion of projects is concerned.

These forms of fragmentation have crippled the narrative cinema culture and replaced it with the cult of stylization employed by creative practitioners when bastardized by a consumerist commercial industry. Temporary ventures such as entertainment series, reality shows, game-shows, sports, studio talk shows and the like have absorbed a great pool of creative practitioners and taken centre stage as the primary output of the South Africa Film Industry. In reality many South African productions remain scarce, either obscure and solely representative of High Art aspirations of auteurism (looking for instance at locally produced feature films like Tsotsi and Hijack Stories); and it should be noted however that in our supposed quest towards crossing linguistic zones and accessing a broader market, a homogenization of expression through language might retard the output of indigenous language cinema, thus hampering the representational capacity of cinema in identity formation and communication.

Further fragmentation is still inevitable as we are beginning to see during this epoch of globalization through communications technologies, whereby cultural by-products that are poignant decline in numbers and frequency of output. Specialized technologies such as the internet(as a content portal as opposed to broadband content portal) have overtaken the exhibition monopolists of the previous century and in fact proliferated uncontrollable access to virtually any information, but as noted in the pages above the idea of electronic democracy… where does it feature when all information is being allotted to a homogenous cultural pool, close knit through language – English; and other western trends so punted through the audio-visual medium?

This brings me to another question concerning the crucial importance of the cultural dimension greatly reinforced by most African Filmmakers who aimed to counter the overwhelming influence of Western cultural values. How does a homogenous form of expression transmit identities which are transient and in constant reformation through their dynamic linguistic realities?

Further questions that arise therefore become those about distribution of such essential information to the underprivileged and mechanisms of countering commercial distribution by means of competitive selective systems. What other automatic systems aught be in place that can continue to reward success to information dissemination required at grass-root market-levels on linguistic terms relevant to their reality-definitions?

i told you that you love your brother more than me.
you told me that’s not true.
i said that i´m jealous of your brother.
you said that you wanted us to get along.
i said that it seems like you want me to fuck your brother.
you said that your brother only loves me because he’s your brother.
i said that i love your brother because he’s him and not because he’s your brother.
your brother said that he loves you more than life.
i said that i love you more than life too.
your brother told me that our love for you is what makes us love each other.
i told your brother that my love for him is what makes me love him.
your brother said that he loves me.
i said that i love him too.
you said that you love us both.
your brother said that he loves us both.
i said that i love you both.
you said that me loving your brother takes away your love for me.
your brother said that your lack of love for me takes away his love for me.
i said great, so now you two can go and fuck each other.

I did this cartoon in 1995 for Cori and my wedding program.

There’s a store near my home with a big industrial plastic sign out front. It’s the kind of sign that’s lit from within by long fluorescent lights. In big, bold letters it reads “WEDDING SUPPLIES.” I always read it as “WELDING SUPPLIES.”

Although I would have loved to, I did not wear a welding suit to the ceremony. If I had, I believe the nuptial event would never have occurred.

In 1980 in Brockton, Massachusetts, the Fannings threw a high-school graduation party. The party quickly swelled out of control and over 3,000 people stormed the property. John Fanning, 14, was trying to raise money to pay for everything, and made a few thousand dollars off it. Meanwhile, his older sister Colleen hooked up with one of the members of the band Macbeth that had been hired to play. She got knocked up, and the jerk dumped her, but she was convinced to keep the son, who she named Shawn.

How appropriate, then, that the bastard son of an out-of-control house party would grow up to create one of the more controversial computer programs in history and, by some standards, change the music industry permanently.

Shawn and John Fanning always got along together, and John would often lend Shawn computer equipment and whatever else he could find. John gave Shawn a job at NetGames, one of his many companies he started, and let him work on various programming projects to his heart’s content (although he had a reputation for not finishing what he started). Shawn eventually went to college at Northeastern, where he gained the nickname “Napster” from his nappy hairstyle. He eventually dropped out, but not before writing an MP3 trading program that became, simply, Napster.

And then the whole thing went to hell.

John Fanning saw the potential for Napster and started funding its continued development. To anyone who used the program in its various iterations, some things are obvious: professional, talented programmers were brought in to make the thing run better, and a lot of legal maneuvers were put into place to try and protect the company. For all his name being on the building, Napster had as much to do with Napster 2.0 and the growth/direction of the company as Ronald McDonald did with flipping burgers at the local Mickey D’s.

The lawsuits came, with Napster (the company) squelching this way and that to get out of the mess. People started hacking Napster protocols to make their own versions of the program. Napster, which based its entire business model on trading copyrighted works, started sending legal threats to people selling Napster T-shirts and hats. And then Metallica got involved. The Record Industry went completely over the top, and if nothing else came of the entire event, the world was shown how entirely out of control the music industry had become in terms of methods, lawsuits, and behind-the-scenes skullduggery, a show of the man behind the curtain that they will ultimately regret very much.

Ultimately, Napster sold itself out to Bertelsmann, a worldwide media conglomerate (and fuckers of the first order), but by any of a number of accounts, John Fanning’s clinging to control of the company to the end and demanding huge amounts of cash for its properties doomed it completely.

As for the created industry of Peer-to-Peer File Sharing that Napster lit off, one firm tracking filesharing statistics said that more files were traded in the month after Napster was shut down than in the previous two years Napster had existed, combined. Translation: The music industry thought it was already in trouble, until the second dildo slid in.

this article first appeared on rotten.com

click here to see dick tuinder’s beautiful new animation film

check out lydia lunch’s brilliant new track on her myspace page

Chain D.L.K.: When did you exactly start writing with diaries during your childhood or later and can you remember why? Did it have to do with an urge to speak out your own but was already “therapeutical”?

Lydia Lunch: I started writing at 12 as way to vent my extreme hatred and frustration. Literature was always more important to me than music. I had already started reading Hubert Selby Jr., Henry Miller and De Sade, so writing came naturally to me.

Chain D.L.K.: In France they compared your “crude and cynical” style to authors like Genet and Miller. After I’ve seen “Fingered” and after having read “Paradoxia”, the sense I had was that violence happened randomly or in an absurd way like in some of Albert Camus’ books above all in “The Stranger”.

Lydia Lunch: Violence is of an elemental nature. Nature herself is extremely violent. Violence can act as a magnetism. I believe in the charisma of both positive and negative forces. Yes it can be ‘random’, but more often than not it is extremely predictable, once you learn to recognize the warning signs you can decide whether or not to play into its hands.

Chain D.L.K.: Both in “Johnny behind the deuce” and in “Paradoxia” I’ve read about capturing “…/The transient fleeting second of purity etched deep within his innocent smile/” of a young boy. In my mind your words painted the image of a vampire looking out for blood. What do you think about it? Above all why have you been desperately looking for that “transient purity”?

Lydia Lunch: I have desperately sought purity, and have found it in young boys and been attracted to it, because it was the one thing I was denied at the hands of very early abuse.

Chain D.L.K.: I don’t know if you ever read anything written by Germaine Greer. With her latest book (”The Boy”) she’s had some problems with the public opinion for the fact she spoke openly about the fact young boys are not just “handsome” but unconsciously sexy. I repeat I really don’t know if you’ve read anything she’s wrote but somehow I happened to think your idea was similar. And I’d also like to know if you have an explanation for the fact that it all created a lot of polemics.

Lydia Lunch: I prefer the writing of Mary Daly. But to answer the question. Born out of an act of lust or love, conceived in the womb, squeezed out of the vagina, breast fed, yet forced to pretend sex doesn’t exist until someone else decides you’re old enough to legally have it (which itself varies from State to State, country to country) our true sexual nature is still in this day and age, either denied, manipulated, insulted, abused, chronically aroused, or perverted by the lack of understanding shown to our most complex emotion. That an older woman admits attraction to a boy’s natural beauty, and it causes an uproar, is pathetic. The media is full of barely post-adolescent pop porn princesses used as pawns to sell everything from cars to music. Flip it on its head and all hell breaks loose. Outrageous, really.

Chain D.L.K.: In the interview included in “Angry Woman” (by Andrea Juno), you say the most important step for a victim of violence is to get back to the present time since “past is past”. Don’t you think that on the contrary with your records and above all with your writings you somehow “perpetrate the pain”?

Lydia Lunch: If it seems as if I ‘perpetrate the pain’ it is only as a recourse to admit to it and get over it. My pain may fade, but new victims are created every second, often due to forces much larger than them, universal in fact, which I feel I need to give articulation to.

Chain D.L.K.: From your “Conspiracy of Woman” spoken CD to your reading in Genoa of the last year, I got the impression your performances have become more and more political. If it was not for your “brutality” it also reminded me of Jello Biafra.

Lydia Lunch: “Conspiracy of Women” was done many years ago. I began speaking about the tyranny of politics in 1982. I have always bounced between the political and the extremely personal, which is just a microcosm of the greater imbalance of power. My main theme.

Chain D.L.K.: You give the impression of a determined person with a clear perception of what she wants and how to get it, but is there anything you regret?

Lydia Lunch: Regret…never. Nothing. Ever.

Chain D.L.K.: How do you think you’ve changed from your early days as a singer/performer/writer. Obviously becoming “mature” — whatever it means — you know better how to do things, but I mean, do you perceive any consistent changes in your approach, in the motivations, or just in the expectations from when you started?

Lydia Lunch: I have been on a lateral trajectory my entire career. I have always dealt with the same issues, and probably always will. Obsession. Power. Sex. War. All one in the same. My challenge is to find new ways to express the same universal and unending battles. Until the battle is over, which it never will be there will always exist prejudice, inequality, injustice, violence, etc. I will continue to battle on…

Chain D.L.K.: I’ve read lately you’ve been collaborating with Asia Argento and with Gus Van Sant lately. Is there anything else in store?

Lydia Lunch: More music, more books, more photography, more films and a combination in as many ways as possible of all the above.

this interview first appeared on chain d.l.k.

“as soon as you start talking talking you start lying”
“ag, don’t be paras ek se, it’s normal for a person to be threatened by the mass, objectivity itself is dehumanizing”
we’re in the shoarma place in norwood
little israel they call it here
roy comes in blowing heavy bubbles
“i was diluted, i’m all coming out like a wash-down”
it’s all pickles and humus here in norwood
there’s no evidence whatsoever that we’re in africa south
well, except for the waitresses but we’re trained not to see them
roy doesn’t want to walk because it’s shabbas
talking however he’s not shy from
“i don’t want to be owned, we own ourselves”
some ugly old gangster who is the very opposite of tall
walks in with a babe on his arm that is but beddable i assure you
not to mention one and a half heads taller than her date
roy grumbles
“when he sits down he grows six inches on his wallet”

this oke pulls into the bo
sits next to Voda
tunes him
“the most important human endeavour is love and if anyone disagrees with me i’ll kick his arse”
voda says nothing
which is not unusual
voda does not like to overspend in the verbal department
the oke orders himself a drink
a double gin and tonic

as Busty the barmaid is about to pour in the tonic
the oke shouts out
“whoa! no need to drown the gin in that tonic”
he holds his drink up to the light and checks himself out in the mirror
“here’s one for you pal, i love you”
smiles grimly at himself
then he downs all of that gin
shakes his head with his lips going all slobbery
tunes Busty “chick will you marry me?”

“certainly not”
“and why not”
“i don’t know you”
“well i’m not butt ugly and i’m not as dumb as a bag of shovels either”

for the first time tonight Voda gives signs that indicate his ears and his tongue are both still in workable order
he turns slightly towards this oke whose name still has not been uttered
raises the eyebrow above his left eye and mutters
“boet, that’s debatable”

I consider it the best South African album ever released:
From the opening metallic-abattoir screech to the final chanted warnings, Living In The Heart Of The Beast is a tirade at the apartheid government and its cultural apologists. Released at the height of the State of Emergency, it was banned and suppressed immediately and creator Warrick Sony fled to Europe.
A guitar-synth-percussion-brass studio creation stuffed with samples and tape-loops, warped by perspective inversions and technical trickery, twisted by sarcastic and satirical referencing, littered with broken rhythms and unsettling arrangements, LITHOTB is an extremely subversive statement on many levels. Not-rock, not-pop, not-jazz, not-electro, not-tribal, not-settler, not-anything-you’ve-ever-heard-before, totally original and yet shamelessly referencing all musics, it’s a genuine avant-garde masterpiece. A recurring theme, the alienation of the country’s ruling class, is amplified by surprise editing and a 3D production, which makes for an extremely disturbing aural experience imbued with a constant sense of threat and madness. Staring with it into the abyss in 1986, this record made me shit myself.

kevin breed

originally published on psykicks.net (a now defunct trance site)

by Graham Rae
(2007-09-10)
“Llik Your Idols” by French filmmaker Angelique Bosio documents the still-influential (and still underground) Cinema of Transgression, and Film Threat had an opportunity to discuss the film and the cinema movement with Angelique prior to the film’s West Coast film festival premiere.

What is your background in films?

For a long time I was much more into music and literature. I became aware of films quite late to be honest. And in an odd way I think I saw them as a fascinating combination of what I loved initially. Because I was a complete novice. Because it was new to me, like a thrilling open space. Then I started working on films simply. I think the first film that struck me in that way was “Cry Baby” by John Waters. Then I saw the ones of Cassavetes, Bunuel, Polanski, Argento… I love people like Buscemi, Altman, Korine… Original, isn’t it??!! No genre in particular really.

How did you first hear about or see Cinema of Transgression films?

As I said, I was much more into music as a teenager. I was listening a lot to bands like Royal Trux and Sonic Youth. That’s how I first saw photos by Richard Kern, on the Sister and EVOL albums. I’m not sure how it did happen but at one point this friend of mine, who loved Sonic Youth as well, gave me a VHS of Cinema of Transgression films that were then distributed by Haxan in France. It was something of a forbidden tape! Actually this friend ended up making the music of the documentary. He and his brother formed the band dDamage a few years ago.

What was it that attracted you to the COT?

I think at first it was that “Punk quality,” the fury in it. The music too of course. I didn’t know much about the context. Later I got more and more interested in Richard Kern, Lydia Lunch and David Wojnarowicz in particular, who also was a fabulous writer. Some of the people involved in the COT I find really talented and fascinating. As for the films, they not only testify to a New York I’ve been fantasizing of for a long time but they’re also and mostly challenging artistically. And I think people like Kern and Lunch raised important questions about sexuality and its representation, which interests me a lot. There’s so much to say about the COT. It’s so diverse too. If I had to pick one thing that attracts me, I think it would be a film: “Thrust in Me”. Because of what it tells about, because of the narcissism, the cynicism, the beauty in it, the horror in it, the violence, the humor, The Dream Syndicate! I guess what I like about the COT is the contradictions I see. It’s immediate, savage and yet extremely clever, even elegant. It’s simple, honest and yet elaborated and opaque.

What made you decide to do a documentary about the COT?

First, I wanted to write a book about it. Later it naturally became a documentary because of the context I was living in, the people around me, what I was working on then… I think what interested me in doing it was the people involved in the COT rather than the films themselves. Some of them intrigued me, I was not sure why. I just had some kind of affection for them I just couldn’t explain. Nothing to do with identification! Anyway, what was certain is that I wanted to know what they felt about this “movement” 20 years later, and how their work had changed along with their lives as they had gotten older. Something about survival and how one adapts to life, how one’s art or beliefs adapt to life. It may sound nostalgic but nostalgia is precisely what I wanted to avoid. Who they are now and how they look at their young selves is more interesting to me than who I might think they were then. I didn’t want to glorify the COT or pretend I could tell the story as if I had been there in NY in the 80’s to experience it myself.

Do you think the movement has gotten the respect or acknowledgement it deserves?

This is a tricky one! First it’s not over yet. People will keep showing it, writing about it, filming documentaries or even fictions on it. The story is going to keep changing. So will its definition, its impact… It was not so long ago after all. Moreover I’m not even sure I would call it a movement. Finally I couldn’t tell how much respect or acknowledgement something deserves. I guess most of these people don’t even care about this, but more about how much respect and acknowledgement what they do today actually gets. What I can say is that it was underground and meant to be. Maybe it’s supposed to stay that way.

Why hasn’t a documentary about it been made before now?

I know there was something done about Richard Kern (photo sessions being filmed). SA Crary did “Kill Your Idols” about the NY music scene in which Foetus, Arto Lindsay, Lydia Lunch etc…appear. To my knowledge, nothing on film was made about the COT specifically. But maybe these documentaries simply never got out. I’m sure I’m not the only one having thought about it! I bet it’s just because people couldn’t make it happen for technical or financial reasons. Or because these filmmakers didn’t want to participate in such a thing until recently. Or more possibly because “Deathtripping” by Jack Sargeant was such an excellent and complete book about it! Actually the book will be published in a new version in December by Soft Skull. I strongly recommend it.

How influential do you think the COT has been on popular culture?

I’m sure it has influenced many people who are now making music videos, films, music, taking photographs, writing books… I am sure the impact has been really important and wide. Even if people don’t clearly refer to it, one can tell that their aesthetics has spread in many ways. Richard Kern and Lydia Lunch are probably the best examples, not just for their talent as a filmmaker / photographer or a songwriter, but also because they truly broke taboos and changed our perception of sexuality, violence, voyeurism, pornography and what can be said or showed when it comes to these issues, in the same way Larry Clark did. Today Richard can shoot for porn magazines as well as famous fashion magazines like Purple. He’s published by Taschen. He did a video for Marilyn Manson. David Wojanrowicz’s books were published in France recently by Editions Desordres. These people still influence popular culture because there is something truly disturbing and challenging in what they did and therefore in the COT. Something that is not just about cinema or the COT.

What is your impression of what the movement was trying to do and how far do you think they succeeded in this?

I was clearly told they weren’t trying to do anything or expecting anything from the COT. They were young, living in the Lower East Side in the 80’s, they responded to the environment. And their work is so diverse! I’m sure now they didn’t aim at anything else than making their own art. What would be the link between “Fingered” by Kern and “Whoregasm” by Nick Zedd? Or “Where Evil Dwells” by Tommy Turner and David Wojnarowicz? I think they were trying to do stuff freely! I remember Bruce LaBruce saying that they were not political but outsiders, dropouts. So I guess if they succeeded in doing something it’s for some of them to have kept making their art. I don’t believe they were militants or planning the next 10 years of their lives.

What was it about the films that people found so threatening?

I can understand that some people might find it offensive and obscene. It’s unpleasant for some to see blood, murders, violence, sex on screen. It just depends on how much one can take emotionally, on their personal and psychological tolerance, their own moral values and taboos. But thinking the films are threatening is different. On the one hand, I guess one might think they were threatening then because they were an immediate testimony of what was truly happening in these people lives and in NY at the time. And therefore they had an aggressive social and political meaning, whether the filmmakers wanted it or not. On the other hand, they remain threatening because some of the films like “Fingered” or “The Right Side of my Brain” by Richard Kern and Lydia Lunch tell about urges that we all have but that we don’t necessarily admit. There’s a postcard right in front of me now saying “Crime isn’t just for Criminals”. If you think about it, it’s threatening, disturbing for oneself to admit the idea that they all are potentially as dark as the characters in these films.

How much did “Llik Your Idols” end up costing and how did you finance it?

I’m not sure exactly how much it cost because it was a five-year-long thing. But I did finance it myself. Of course some people have helped me lending me equipment etc… What happened was I decided to go to NY in 2002 to do interviews. I kept on filming exhibitions, screenings, making of films and doing interviews whenever I had the opportunity. Meanwhile I was trying to convince French companies to produce the documentary but they systematically told me these people were not famous enough, and that the films were too violent and pornographic to sell it to a French TV channel. There has been two companies though, Cybride Production and ADN Factory, that tried to help me. But financially speaking, I was on my own. So I took a lousy job to finish it. Then I met the producer at Kidam and their editor, Thomas Drapron, who has been so great and we completed the film. But it was a very low budget thing that caused me a lot of trouble! And a lot of fun too.

Why did you call it “Llik Your Idols?” It’s a somewhat odd name.

I would have said “stupid name”! Five years ago, I was trying to find a name and that’s the funniest one I found. It made me laugh, simply. It comes from these horrible T-shirts that were all over the flea market when I was a teenager: the ones presenting the Christ on the cross with “Kill Your Idols” on it. If I remember well, there was another with Kurt Cobain on it after he died. I just hated them. It was sort of a phony punk rock cliché then. As I mostly didn’t want to make a nostalgic documentary about “Punks” in their forties or fifties, I picked that slogan and slightly change it to make it sound ironic. “To lick” is “lécher” in French, and “faire de la lèche” (”licking”) means “flatter”: I didn’t want to flatter these people or glorify the COT. That’s it. But mostly it was a funny title to me. I have a very bad sense of humor, I know.

What medium did you shoot it on?

I mostly used a PD150. But I made this terrible mistake under someone’s advice to shoot it in 16/9 and not 4/3.

How long did it take to shoot?

Five years, but of course not constantly. The first interview I did was Nick Zedd’s in NY in 2002. The last thing I filmed was Lydia Lunch and Richard Hell doing lectures at The French Cinematheque more than a year ago. It depended on the opportunities. There’s one thing I couldn’t film that I strongly regret. 3 years ago, I attended a screening of “Submit To Me” by Richard Kern in Paris. After a few seconds I heard a woman yelling to the projectionist to cut it. There was despair in her voice, really. When the film stopped and the lights came back, I saw her running to the exit door holding two 12 year-old kids by the hand. She was panicking, saying that it wasn’t art. The kids didn’t say a thing. They were unmoved.

by chris armstrong (LINK centre, wits university) and heather ford (icommons)

Introduction: March 2006 will be remembered for many years as a “first” for the South African film industry. On this day, director Gavin Hood held up South Africa’s – indeed Africa’s – first Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. The coveted Oscar was received for Tsotsi, and for days afterwards, national television, newspapers, radio and the Internet showcased interviews and features with anyone involved with the production – basking in what South Africans hoped was a sign of a new era for filmmaking in the country.

But the euphoria around this accomplishment was in some respects short-lived. Soon after the win, Tsotsi was in the news again. This time because a pirate copy of the movie was being distributed throughout the country, and it was believed that someone at the post-production facility had leaked a cut of the film. In early April 2006, two former employees of the firm where post-production took place were arrested and charged with fraud and theft (SAPA, 2006).

During this time, national public radio station SAfm aired a debate about the case, discussing the issues of piracy and local film production with key figures in the industry and members of the public. One caller living in the village of Ramosadi, North-West Province – the home village of Tsotsi lead actor Presley Chweneyagae’s family – said that, after hearing about the film and Chweneyagae’s role in it, he had wanted to watch it, but because the nearest movie theatre is many kilometres from where he lives, he had to buy a pirated DVD of the film.

The Tsotsi story got people asking some pertinent questions about the dynamics of South African film distribution – about how best to reach audiences, about how to facilitate better and faster distribution of legal DVD versions of films, about the balance of distribution control between creators/producers and the broadcasters/cinemas, and about the role of more creator/producer-oriented distribution efforts such as those provided by the Film Resource Unit (FRU).

This paper does not aim to account for all of the complex dynamics in South African film distribution, but rather to focus in on two broad themes: the dynamics of digitisation; and the dynamics around rights (copyright and licensing of distribution rights). This article aims to point to potential opportunities for improved South African film distribution, to the benefit of both creators/producers and distributors, as presented by:

• the digital environment and the innovative distribution and promotion techniques this environment makes possible for South African film; and

• new approaches to copyright and licensing of distribution rights – approaches seemingly made both more necessary and more realisable in the digital environment.

Exploitation of both of these sets of opportunities has the potential to give added dynamism and sustainability to South Africa’s independent film production sector – a sector which has, in recent years, consistently proved its ability to generate world-class cinema with a South African flavour. Tsotsi is but one of many examples of local film productions that seem to have deserved, and could potentially have drawn better revenues from, wider distribution/promotion in South Africa on cinematic, broadcast, DVD and online/cell phone platforms.

The central argument of this paper is that creative approaches to copyright management and to licensing of distribution rights, deployed within the digital, multi-platform environment, hold the potential to better balance the rights of creators/ producers with those of broadcasters/cinemas/DVD distributors, thus potentially building a South African film industry with more winners and fewer losers.

download the full paper from icommons.org

Before explicitly delving into the crux of conditions ushered in by Globalization and its neo-liberalization of most creative practices; I would like to offer a brief overview of a case study conducted over a period of time while I was exposed to some enlightening literature about African Cinema. Below is a critical outline of certain extreme modalities which were employed by elite strategists in Arabophone countries, and their policy-making which led to the extinction if not the crippling of one of the most vibrant cinema cultures on the African continent.

Excerpt (a study done some time ago)

While Portuguese-speaking African films are not totally unknown in France (two films by Flora Gomes from Guinea-Bissau were released here and a third one is likely to come out soon), the overwhelming majority of these films remains to be discovered. For historical and political reasons, French-speaking African film-makers have had more luck than their Portuguese-speaking colleagues in making and showing their films. The former Portuguese colonies share a common film history closely linked to the late and difficult decolonization: 1974 for Guinea-Bissau, 1975 for Angola, Cape Verde Islands and Mozambique. With the exception of a few Angolan propaganda documentaries made by the Independence fighters in the 1960s, Portuguese-speaking African cinema is less than thirty-years old.

Developing in different directions and with various degrees, it has depended on the new States’ initiatives to try and create film industries out of nothing. Angola has the oldest film industry. The first documentaries were made before Independence and produced by the MPLA, one of the independence movements. Used as a political tool, Angolan films are often, but not exclusively, documentaries. Ruined by forty years of war, Angola has not been able to develop a film industry, producing only one feature film and a few documentaries. Despite extremely harsh conditions, two feature films are currently being made.

The most prolific country is Mozambique. Its politically motivated, mostly documentary cinema has more than 400 films, among which are a few fiction films. Cinema in Mozambique is currently going through a revival. The most recent film industry is Cape Verde’s where the first feature film was made in 1994 (Ilheu de contenda, Le‹o Lopes). Thanks to a stable political situation, Cape Verde has been able to develop its own film industry with Government support.

A fascination for the tropics and the rich local music, introduced in the Western countries by Cesaria Evora’s mornas, have brought about the making of many documentaries and feature films, a remarkable fact for such a small country. The most widely recognized films are from Guinea-Bissau.

In a country where practically no film was made until the 1990s, two directors emerged whose films have been seen around the world: Sana Na NÕhada and Flora Gomes in particular. The local film industry greatly suffered from the 1998 coup. Today, it is trying to set itself up again, despite difficulties arousing from the regime’s instability. Tunisian cinema was born on a particularly fertile ground, nurtured by a love of cinema and admiration for the great works of world cinema. As early as 1922, Samama Chikly, a forerunner of Tunisian cinema and a dabbler who shot the first submarine and aerial (from a hot-air balloon) pictures, made a short fiction film (”Zohra”) and the medium-length “Aïn el Ghazel” in 1924, starring his own daughter Haydé, and so became one of the early “indigenous” film-makers of the African continent (the first feature film to which contributed an Egyptian director was only made in 1927).

Later, in 1949, seven years before it acquired its political independence, Tunisia was already one of the countries in the African continent with the biggest number of film societies. Tahar Cheriaa, the president of the federation of film societies and later in charge of the cinema department at the Ministry for Culture, was set to become the “father” of the first Tunisian film productions (Omar Khlifi’s “L’Aube”, the first Tunisian feature film, was made in 1967) and the founder of the very first Pan-African and Pan-Arab film festival, the “Journées cinématographiques de Carthage” (JCC, the Carthage Film Days) which are now as popular as they were in 1966.

The film societies and the JCC contributed to training demanding film-makers and film-goers. Right from the beginning, it was never a case of mimicking the unique, “old” Arab cinema (commercial Egyptian cinema), a great provider of melodramas and musical films out of which a few auteurs were striving to make themselves known. The majority of film-makers would rather try their hand at successfully making, each in their own style, original “expressive” films (about politics, society, culture, etc.) bearing their maker’s touch and aiming for the international quality standards. Apart from a few exceptions, they did so without taking the easy way out, which would have been rewarding only with the local audience.

Unlike its neighbours in Maghreb where, for various reasons and in various periods, “epic” and “populist” films were made, such categories are virtually non-existent in Tunisian cinema where auteur films prevail in an almost individualistic manner. These films are often very different from each other: for example, Nacer Khemir’s aesthetic choices have nothing in common with Nouri Bouzid’s. In spite of a general “family likeness” and common subject matters, it has been said that each Tunisian film-maker represents his or her own “aesthetic school”, as we can see in the films shown in Nantes, which were all landmarks in their own time.

Such freedom of choice was made possible because Tunisia also has a kind of film censorship (different from TV censorship) which is undoubtedly one of the most lenient in the Arab world: scenes that are forbidden in other Arab countries (and edited out from Tunisian films screened there), revealing the celebration of female nudity (”Halfaouine”), homosexuality (”Man of Ashes”), political repression (”Golden Horseshoes”), sex tourism (”Bezness”), the destitution of poor areas (”Essaida”), women’s right to sexual enlightenment (”Fatma”, “Red Satin”), were eventually approved by Tunisian censorship as long as they were expressed by artists and necessary to the coherence of their work. All these elements (a wide film-loving audience and great freedom of expression allowing film-makers to deal with bold subject matters confronting what remained taboo elsewhere), as well as the economic rejection of the all-powerful State and the active support of the private sector which enabled energetic producers (such as Ahmed Attia, Hassan Daldoul, Selma Baccar, and today Dora Bouchoucha, Ibrahim Letaief, Nejib Belkadhi, etc.) to emerge, despite difficulties, all these helped create a sort of golden age both for the artists and the audience during the 1986-1996 decade.

Of course, during the previous decade, Tunisian cinema had already been a star on the international festival scene with several films such as “The Ambassadors” (1976), “Sun of the Hyenas” (1977), “Aziza” (1980), “The Trace” (1982), “Traversées” (1982), and “The Surveyors of The Desert” (1984), which all received numerous awards in many festivals. The miracle was that, from “Man of Ashes” (1986) onwards, Tunisian viewers also acclaimed national films in an unprecedented way, unlike what happened in most Southern countries where auteur films are restrained within the ghetto of art houses or exclusively benefit from the “prestige” of foreign festivals. Tunisian auteur films did much better at the local box-office than the best-selling Hollywood or Egyptian films, even so-called difficult films such as “Chich Khan” or “Soltane el Medina”: they created a totally new filmic category Ñ mass auteur films! These films won on the local as well as international scenes through theatrical release in foreign countries, reaching a wider audience than that of the festivals, as was the case for big local successes like “The Silences of the Palace”, “Halfaouine”, “A Summer in La Goulette”, (and later abroad “Red Satin”).

The makers of these films were often honoured by an invitation to be members of official juries in major film events such as Cannes, Venice and Berlin. The golden age of the local triumph of Tunisian films stopped after a decade for a number of reasons: the proliferation of very cheap satellite dishes with “pirate cards” (giving free access to subscription-based TV channels) and video shops also offering the latest pirated films have kept the general audience away form the big screen. Also, the fact that ERTT (the national TV network) stopped showing daily promotional trailers of Tunisian films deprived the audience of their main source of information and incentive as far as national films were concerned.

The decline was also visible on the international scene. Unlike Tunisia, Morocco remarkably based the organisation of its audiovisual industry on solidarity (Moroccan cinema is funded by a part of the TV advertising income) and thus increased its annual production (Moroccan films logically replaced Tunisian films in the various Cannes festival sections in a healthy continuity as soon as 2002).
Morocco also became a major location for foreign films, whereas Tunisia had been the leader in that respect thanks to Tarek Ben Ammar’s achievement as a famous Tunisian producer of international scale. Today Tunisian cinema is far behind in structural terms.

Tunisia still has no national film centre, no unified ticketing system, no multiplexes (to stop viewers from deserting one-screen cinemas, as this was done elsewhere), no diversified funding sources. It yields no more than three feature films a year, with the help of the praiseworthy (and steadily increasing) financial support of the Ministry for Culture and other national and foreign institutional forms of support. Economic helplessness is coupled with artistic disarray. So far, the success of Tunisian cinema had come from the generation of the 1960s film societies, fostered by a love of the great works of the silver screen, a generation born before the generalisation of television which introduced a new relationship to the moving image.

To stop the decline of the local audience and of the Tunisian presence on the international scene, new film-makers desperately and unconsciously try to mimic what they think were the “recipes” for the success of the previous generation, or the “expectations” of foreign festival programmers.

Others explore totally new directions: this is what Raja Amari or Nidhal Chatta did in their first features and what can be seen in a number of short fiction films by newcomers, or in Hichem Ben Ammar’s “ethnographic” and poetic documentaries. While economic reorganisation is yet to happen, the achievements of tomorrow’s Tunisian cinema will surely come from this new “young wave”.