The highly acclaimed documentary series America: The Story of Us has had one of the writes of the series, Jenny Ash, nominated for an Emmy Award on Saturday. An interesting aspect of this groundbreaking series is that South Africa doubled for America in the recording of significant chapters in America’s history.
In the February issue of Screen Africa we interviewed a number of the South Africans involved in the project. We also wrote about the series for Screen Africa’s email newsletter of 11 April. However, as soon as the story appeared online there was a flurry of communications with Screen Africa requesting the removal of the story. It appears that the producers were trying to sell the series at MIPTV and wanted the South African connection played down completely. We felt unhappy about removing the story from our website as it smacked of censorship. But we did not want to stand in the way of potential sales so obliged.
Now fortunately, the news about South Africa’s major contribution to the American story is allowed to run in the general press judging from The Times newspaper story of 23 August 2010 which interviewed Ash who spoke openly about the indebtedness of the series to this country.
Here we quote from our own story which we ran in February’s Screen Africa magazine and reveals the contribution made by South Africans who worked on the series.
“The History Channel, which uses primarily stock footage in its history shows, has ventured into new territory by commissioning dramatised sequences rather than stock footage for its largest series to date,’ explained David Wicht of Film Afrika, the local producers. “We assembled one of the country’s finest crews for the production of over eight hours of material, spanning 400 years of USA history.’
According to line producer Meryl Schutte, 10 episodes of a total of 12, had dramatic reconstruction content, and were shot in South Africa. “The first 10 episodes contained dramatic reconstruction of historical events between 1620 (and the arrival of the early pilgrims and their Plymouth Settlement) and mid 1940s (World War II; Pearl Harbour; D-Day).
“Cape Town offered a perfect variety of landscapes, which could match those in the US, such as Utah, the Sierra Nevada mountains, the Great Plains, prairies, the Rocky Mountains, the Niagara escarpment, and sites of battles with the Native American Indians through the Civil War and World War II, amongst others. All of the locations used were within a 50-km radius of the city.’
The final two episodes dealing with present day documentary elements hinge largely on interviews with celebrities, politicians, musicians, etc.
