The Gauteng Film Commission (GFC), the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the Industrial Development Corporation and the South African Consulate will represent South Africa at the 35th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) 2010. The festival will be held in Toronto from the 9 to 19 September.
The South African delegation have planned roundtable meetings, hosting of the South Africa Day, advertising in the Hollywood Reporter and insertion of flyers in delegate bags as part of the marketing campaign for TIFF 2010.
This year, three South African films namely State of Violence, The Bang Bang Cluband Life Above All have been entered for the film festival. The Bang Bang Club will have a Gala Showing at the festival. The Bang Bang Club is one of 15 Gala presentations at this year’s festival.
The Bang Bang Club and State of Violence were shot in the Gauteng province with the support of the GFC.
The Bang Bang Club features home-grown talent like Frank Rautenbach (Ken Oosterbroek) and Neels van Jaarsveld (Joao Silva) as well as Hollywood actors Ryan Phillippe and Taylor Kitsch.
The movie, directed by Steven Silver, is centred on four young photographers, Greg Marinovich, Kevin Carter, Ken Oosterbroek and Joao Silva, whose photographs captured the final bloody days of white rule in South Africa and the final demise of apartheid. The film tells the remarkable and sometimes harrowing story of these young men – and the extraordinary extremes they went to in order to capture their pictures. The film is based on co-authors Marinovich & Joao Silver book by the same name. A Canadian/South African co-production, the movie qualified for the South African Department of Trade & Industry rebate. While all the principle photography was completed in Gauteng, with local crew and equipment, the post-production was done in Canada.
The same street and the same wall where photographers Ken Oosterbroek was killed and Greg Marinovich was wounded, in Thokoza township, were used in the film, as well as Nancefield Hostel in Soweto and the train station and platform which formed the backdrop for Marinovich’s famous Pulitzer-prize winning photograph of the necklacing by ANC supporters of a man they believed to be an Inkatha spy.
State of Violence, directed by Khalo Matabane is about Bobedi, a newly appointed CEO of a large mining company, whose wife is murdered during the celebrations. Frustrated by the pace of justice, Bobedi decides that revenge is his only option. But when he catches the murderer, Bobedi comes face to face with a terrible secret that connects him across time and history.
