The screen adaptation of South African playwright Athol Fugard’s apartheid era play, Master Harold and the Boys, began shooting in Cape Town in mid-January. It is one of the first feature films in South Africa to be shot on the RED One camera.
Produced by Spier Films (U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, Son of Man) and Focus Films (Crime Time, Othello), the film stars Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction), Freddie Highmore (Finding Neverland) and local SAFTA Award-winning star, Patrick Mofokeng (The Good Provider).
Three of the four producers are South African, namely Spier Films, Zaheer Goodman-Bhyat and Mike Auret, and David Pupkewitz (The 51st State) of Focus Films. The other producer is legendary Tony Award-winning Broadway producer Nelle Nugent, who initiated the project some years ago. Master Harold and the Boys has a budget of just under $3m.
Apart from its two international leads, Nugent and American director Lonny Price, Master Harold and the Boys is a fully South African film, with Spier Films owning copyright. It is being shot in and around Cape Town over five weeks and will be post-produced at Waterfront Post. All the HODs are South African, including DOP Lance Gewer from the Oscar-winning Tsotsi (based on FugardÕs only novel of the same name), editor Ronelle Loots (U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, The Road to Mecca), production designer Tom Gubb and Pierre Viennings (wardrobe). Philip Miller is composing the music.
Read more in the February 2009 issue of Screen Africa
