kagablog

South African film-maker Teboho Mahlatsi is redefining the film-making canvas. He’s become a pioneering icon of South African film-making with the massive success of the TV series Yizo Yizo and its sequel - but it’s with his short film Portrait of a Young Man Drowning that we see his inner vision.

By Akin Omotoso

Picture an empty canvas called the South African Film Industry. A young man picks up his brush, dips into his paint and paints a perfect picture. Picture actors and directors and audiences alike lining up to crown this young man the next best thing. Journalists undermine him by referring to him as the Quentin Tarantino of South Africa. Picture a TV series that keeps everyone at home every screening for the thirteen weeks it runs, a TV series that had people debating and grooving to a slamming soundtrack. Yizo Yizo even had its own merchandise. Picture me struggling to get one of those caps, and eventually when I did, I felt I could hang.

Now picture this young man going back to the studio and looking across the empty canvas again. As the audience waits in anticipation of Yizo Yizo-The Return, this young man’s mind is on other paintings. Pictures not yet viewed in the vast canvas that is the African landscape of filmmaking. He paints another picture. In this picture he would examine pain and destruction in a township. In this picture he will use imagery straight from the soul. In this picture he would talk about a killer seeking redemption.

The killer walks with his wound in search of water to bathe. The society wants him to come and kill some more. The background music has the sound of water in it. The girls who come to call the killer are sweating. The killer looks, not so much at them, but the tiny trickles of sweat that drop down their necks. The one girl licks her lips to prevent them from drying up. That soothing moisturizer is what the killer craves. Something to wet him. The woman washes her clothes, the killer is mesmerised by the water. The old man drinks clear water in full view of the killer after refusing to allow him to wash at his house because he says it won’t help him. I don’t think I have ever craved to drink water as much as I did when I watched this young man, this young man called Teboho Mahlatsi and his film: Portrait Of A Young Man Drowning.

I heard someone remark that its too Oliver Stone in its outlook. As far as I am concerned, Oliver Stone wishes he could do half of what Teboho is doing. The same person said that the weird angles and the stylisation shouldn’t have been done on 35mm. That the 35mm camera does not call for that. It never ceases to amaze me when certain South African filmmakers are afraid to experiment. Who says 35mm must be this or that? American, European, Japanese directors experiment with the medium like there’s no tomorrow. South African directors run away from it. I am glad Teboho doesn’t. We stand on the threshold of a new generation and we need to start redefining our images and the medium in our own voices. Not the voices of the West, but the voice from the heart. The imagery contained on the canvas of Portrait is one that I have not seen in a while. From the burning car, to the killer seeing himself carrying the coffin of his victim and eventually being carried off dead himself. Forget Yizo Yizo (but didn’t Yizo Yizo 2 just rock?), anyone wanting to praise young Teboho should get a copy of Portrait. There is pain in that movie. Not just some township guys getting down for a party. There is a call for change.

Portrait was part of a group of other films. That year Husk was nominated at Cannes. Husk is a good movie, but I still think they picked the wrong film. The imagery in Husk is very familiar. The imagery in Portrait is new. I wait with bated breath to see what the young man will paint for us next.

this article first appeared on coffeebeans.co.za