Orbis, a short documentary by director Simon Wood has been selected for competition at Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary film festival. This year the festival received 2,724 film submissions from over 45 countries.
Executive director Brett Hendrie commented, “We’re excited to bring to this city an outstanding selection of films from the world’s greatest documentary talents.’
Director Simon Wood commented, “The film was shot on location in Umlazi for one month last year. My first film Forerunners (which played at IDFA in 2011) took three years to finish. My next film, Untamed, is still not finished after four years of work, so Orbis is response to that. I wanted to see if it would be possible to make a documentary quickly, so I decided to shoot every day for one month. We met all the characters in the film by chance which lends itself to an honest observational approach. After filming was completed we edited for 30 days. So the whole process was finished very quickly.’
The only predetermined choice in the film was the location – Umlazi, a vast township next to the Indian Ocean. Wood chose this area due to its proximity to Africa’s busiest port: Durban, a gateway for global economic trade. Wood became fascinated with the circular notion of the global economy. “Each day in Umlazi hundreds of men search for scrap metal with rented shopping trolleys. The metal is packed into containers and sent to the Far East, then returned as consumer products to feed South Africa’s expanding middle class. Orbis ultimately allows us to explore the circular notion of life itself. All form without exception is transient’ said Wood.
Wood was thrilled that the film’s international premiere would be in Toronto, “Canada is the home of many of the world’s greatest documentary filmmakers and I could not be more excited about showing my film there,I cant’ wait’
Orbis is a SaltPeter Production. For more information visit the Orbis website.
