kagablog

TREVOR STEELE TAYLOR

Born in Cape Town in 1952, he remained there far too long, completing a degree in Philosophy at the University of Cape Town. After various rambling positions including being part of a group of young punks who programmed an alternative cinema called The Labia, he spent a year in the off-beat cinemas of London, Amsterdam and Paris. Although in retrospect, he should have introduced himself to the less respectable film-making fraternity in Soho and the Champs Elysees at the time and offered his services, he instead returned to South Africa to programme The Cape Town International Film Festival – a position of immense freedom which gave him the opportunity to introduce Japanese cinema to Cape Town and to champion filmmakers such as Walerian Borowczyk, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Shuji Terayama and Peter Whitehead. Many other festivals entered into the equation, most notably the confrontational Weekly Mail & Guardian Film festival. Widely traveled, presenting South African film programmes in France, Holland, Scandinavia, the USA, Brazil and Switzerland, he peered further and further into the depths of lesser known South African film practitioners, searching not for the obvious but for the maverick non-conformism that lurks on the fringes of every mainstream. He has for the last nine years been the Programme director for Film of the annual National Arts Festival which takes place in Grahamstown. He has been a film critic, has lectured, has written film scripts, has directed and has acted. He fervently loves gospel music and country music, favours high heel boots and owes a debt of gratitude to Aleister Crowley for opening his eyes to the true will. He is married and has a son with whom he often discusses the comparative aesthetic virtues of American cars of the sixties and seventies.

BEYOND YOUR WILDEST DREAMS – AFRICAN CINEMA OFF THE TOURIST MAP

I always knew there was another Africa. I always knew that film aesthetics were profoundly housed in the archetypes of a culture. I always knew that African film aesthetics were as vast and profound as the continent that housed them. For the European explorer, clad in pith helmet and climbing boots, the search for the aesthetic pile, beyond the Mountains of the Moon, where the great Ayesha reigns is a quest as fascinating as being locked into the vaults of Eurocine and having the hours of the night to piece together the mysteries of Alternative Versions.

I saw my first Nigerian film in a little cinema in Brussels called CineNova. I was sitting next to Richard Stanley (also a guest at this festival). The film was End of the Wicked a film by Teco Benson and Helen Ukpabio. I had never seen anything like it before. I turned to Richard. He turned to me and said My faith in cinema is restored!
There you are – even when you think you know the dog, it still has the ability to bite you.

This late night, three programme season is not exhaustive. It is a small delicate bite on a far bigger morsel. The films are primarily from South Africans with one Nigerian exception. The quality is great though and to those who know neither Kaganof nor Stanley, this should be an eye opener.

Did you know that a certain William Akouffo in Ghana made a block buster on no money called Diabolo about a man who turns himself into a snake which enters by way of the genitalia of sleeping women causing them to vomit money? Have you heard of Othello the Black Commando and its prolific director Max H. Boulois? Have you ever encountered The Slit – shot in Zimbabwe and almost ending in tragedy for its German cast and crew? Have you heard of Elvira Hoffman, prolific pornographer and director of Dust Raider and South African Girls? None of these this year but who knows what the future holds?

What the present holds though is more tangible: The long awaited, cell-phone shot feature by the prolific South African Aryan Kaganof Sms Sugarman in which on Christmas Eve in Johannesburg a pimp cruises the streets delivering white hookers to wealthy black punters. Kaganof is also the scriptwriter of Akin Omotoso’s short film Jesus and the Giant in which a black woman Jesus takes on a girl-beater, self-justified rapist who is the Giant. A montage of digital still pictures, the editing creates a rhythm of motion. Then there is Richard Stanley, a luminary figure amongst film directors with his unforgettable Dust Devil about a shape shifter on the roads of a newly independent Namibia. Also on the programme is his Voodoo documentary The White Darkness during the filming of which he, like Maya Deren before him, was initiated as a practitioner of the mysteries.

And then there is Highway to the Grave by the Nigerian auteurs Teco Benson and Helen Okpabio - more than just filmmakers, but evangelists into the bargain. With the aforementioned End of the Wicked they awakened my interest in what is now termed Nollywood and which, thanks to censorial interference has lost the creative spark of the years of the Benson/Ukpabio team.

I will be introducing the screenings as well as having an extended chat with Richard Stanley on stage. I am going to enjoy it. I hope you will too!