sms sugar man: a reaction from christo doherty
hi aryan,
a really evocative film. thanks.
driving away afterwards, i felt the city had been changed . . . that’s
always the effect of powerful art. those hellish panelled rooms lit
up in buildings all across johannesburg; the bitter scenes going on in
cars and hotel lobbies; and a whore’s beauty the only treacherous
relief . . .
as you know, i’ve been long intrigued by the idea of this cellphone
feature. i expected the abstraction in the visuals, although the noise
had more interesting variations than i imagined, not just pixelating
but blossoming and throbbing underneath the narrative. but what i
didn’t anticipate was the intimacy of the cell phone movie. an
intimacy that was intensified by blowing the image up to big screen
proportions. it really knocked me out. and worked so well with the
eroticism of the performances and the tragic pathos of the story. by
the time that the father has discovered the truth about his paternity
- he’s already dead.
best
christo
October 27th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
a comment received from sean o’toole
“Thanks. It’s a nice bit of honest criticism. While I wouldn’t agree that my experience of the city changed, as Christo’s had, it did cue a thought pattern: maybe there is indeed something in this notion of Johannesburg as an elusive metropolis. Your movie made it seem equally dystopian and, in its simplicity, fairy tale-like.