The Game of My Life, a soccer-themed feature film shot over seven days in the Duduza township just outside of Johannesburg, will be represented at the Cannes Film Festival in May by its writer/producer Michael J Rix.
Directed by Dumisani Vusi Nhlapo in his feature film debut, The Game of My Life is going straight to DVD for distribution in South Africa;s townships via a network of vendors. "I’m also hoping to get the DVDs into stores like Reliable. We will be doing a lot of word of mouth marketing and taking ads in the Daily Sun. There is also the potential of selling the film to a local broadcaster," explains Rix.
In January Rix, who single-handedly made South Africa,s first ever claymation feature, Tengers, put out a call to interested parties to each buy a 2% share in The Game of My
Life for R10.000. I managed to raise R15.000 which covered the running costs of the production as my company, Mirror Mountain Pictures, has its own camera equipment and a Final Cut Pro edit suite. The 11 investors in the film, some of whom are American, all have executive producer credits. I’d financed Tengers in a similar way.
Read more in the May 2009 issue of Screen Africa
