Director Ian Gabriel’s film, Four Corners, releases nationwide in South African cinemas on 28 March, and tells the story of a young chess prodigy who must “defy the odds and stay one move in a game where winning or losing can mean the difference between life and death’.
The film, which is set in the Cape Flats, home to the notorious Number Gang factions of the Western Cape, was South Africa’s Official Selection for Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards and an International Press Academy 2014 Satellite Award Nominee for Best International Film.
Giant Films and Moonlighting Films in association with the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa and The National Film and Video Foundation of South Africa present Four Corners to local audiences.
Ian Gabriel
Director
“Strength of family was a starting point and inspiration for this film. Having experienced both bonding and loss as a child, I discovered late in life that my father had twice experienced loss of family, a history that was covered up to protect later generations. This piqued my strong passion for the notion of family as a great binder but also as the impenetrable custodian of losses and pains that can remain forever hidden from view.’
“From this personal passion I hoped to evolve a film about family lost and family regained, and to show it from many shifting perspectives, especially from the point of view of a young boy, because I know that story. I wanted to make a film that dealt with these trials and conflicts, the desire for family, and the absence of family, and the desire to reform and make things whole within the context of gangsterism,’ Gabriel says.
“I wanted to look at how difficult it might be for a father, a gangster, to turn the clock back and set things right. I planned to set the film in the particular world of the Cape Flats where the chances are very high that a boy will grow up in a single parent or no parent fatherless home. I hoped to portray a gangster film in a largely unknown world. And reveal it in a fresh way,’ the director continues.
Redemptive story
According to Gabriel, this was the process when he met Hofmeyr Scholtz to discuss writing the project. “I explained that I wanted to tell a redemptive story about family – about a father, about a son, about a cop who is watching family and young children threatened, and life eroded from outside.
“The creative process was organic, at a later stage we added a daughter who had lost her father from “before’ he died. We decided she should be an outsider returned who knows and reacts against the tough landscape of her youth that she had wanted to escape from, yet feels its roots pulling her back – a common sensation that South Africans and Africans in exile experience.’
Gabriel and Scholtz developed a ‘surrogate’ father that a boy in need of a father might find. “So there we had it – four corners, four lives and sounding boards influencing one boy’s life, reflecting the Four Corners of a chessboard and the Four Corners of a prison cell (literally ‘die Vier Hoeke’ in Sabela prison slang). And each of these simple stories connected with the next to make up the Four Corners in the chessboard of Ricardo’s life,’ adds Gabriel.
Just a few kilometres from where Gabriel lives in Cape Town is the unique world of the Cape Flats where gangsterism is rife and where a boy like Ricardo, the hero of the story, might be drawn by the power and prestige of the gangs.
Truthful portrayal
“In this world I knew actors would be able to find a special connection to their characters if we were able to absolutely truthfully portray the world that the characters inhabited, without resorting to complex themes or a predictable view of the power of the gangs,’ continues Gabriel.
“The world of the Cape Flats is so unique and such a different world that I knew the more we told the more we would need to tell,’ he says. “It wasn’t only with the actors that I wanted to achieve the sense of being ‘in the moment’ – I wanted that from the audience as well if that was possible, so that when finally there is a chase or there is a gun fight, which are staples of the gangster film genre.
“I wanted people to really feel and be in those moments and experience them, just as the community of families in the Cape Flats experience gangster turf outbursts from day to day on the streets, school-fields, playgrounds and block yards which are the chosen “battlegrounds’.’
Gabriel comments that they wanted the performances and the reality of the story to be immediate, spontaneous and visceral, to blur the boundary between real life and film.
“So we looked both among actors and also non-actors who had intense experience of life in the Flats. We found in rehearsal that the actors learnt from the non-actors just as much as the non-actors learned from the actors. We shot the film in communities where “fighting for turf’ and “turf war’ is a daily reality. Sometimes we cast ex-gangsters, ex-prisoners, kids from tough neighbourhoods like Belhar where there’s an intense gang war, who know first-hand what this story is really about.’
Special world of the Cape Flats
He continues: “I hope to leave the audience with an experience that will stay with them after they leave the cinema. If they remember that this special world of the Cape Flats exists and is not only more dangerous, but also much richer than they knew, that will be very satisfying for us as filmmakers and for the communities and families we worked with.
“No matter the danger, no matter the pain, no matter the emotional drain, if you were to decide to claim or reclaim your home and your family in the middle of a turf war, because it was the only family you ever hoped for, you would likely do what people in the Flats do every day as gang wars erupt around them: they go to work if they have the good fortune to have work, they go to school, they stand up and remind us, that they have rights,’ concludes Gabriel.
Jody Abrahams
Rehearsal Coach
“We all need to trust that we are in safe hands to tell the truth.’
Jody Abrahams comments: “For many years I was angered at the way our community’s stories were depicted and told on film, based on stereotypes, hearsay and voyeuristic interpretation. I decided to judiciously check out these “people’ behind Four Corners wanting to make yet another Cape gangster story.
Shedding light on the truth
“Mistrust of the past dissipated and changed into positive belief: These were people who had done their research, were willing to listen to others and would endeavour to get it right. So I supported and believed foremost in the story, the writers, director, producers and actors and decided to assist in any way that would facilitate this story being told as it sheds light on the truths that many face daily on the Cape Flats.’
Abrahams says as a rehearsal coach for kids one has to facilitate truth, trust and safety. Each individual has their own needs, so he assesses each separately and apply different methods. The rest the young storyteller brings it knowing or unknowingly so.
“I rely on the respect, fun and mentorship method,’ continues Abrahams. “The kids that I worked with have seen me and have the greatest respect for the work I have done and in turn I show them respect and positively strengthen their self-confidence.
“Their trust is earned through mutual respect. Then it’s down to the why and how we are telling the story and what is it that they understand of each scenario. By getting them to relate these circumstances to their own experiences they discover the truth,’ Abrahams concludes.
Brendon Daniels
Farakahn
“I am extremely privileged to have been a part of Four Corners, as the film offered the opportunity to shine a spotlight on a segment of the South African community that has many stories to tell, yet are seldom told on film.’
Lindiwe Matshikiza
Leila
“It’s the kind of work actors hope to always be doing in that sense, along with the chance to play in a story that deals with human beings, the triumphs and tragedies that make us up, the uncertainty of one’s decisions, our complexity, vulnerability, strength…’
Irshaad Ally
Gasant
“After reading the script for the first time I was immediately energised to tell this story – because we get the feeling that our gang issue and how it affects our youths often falls on deaf ears and blind eyes. I was glad to learn that there were people out there who wanted to talk about the subject in an insightful way. Four Corners is my big break.’
Jezriel Skei
Ricardo
“I’m 13 now, when I grow older I’d like to be a full time actor. When I met Ian Gabriel he told me to sit in a casting session and argue with Jody Abrahams (actor, comedian, director) and make sure that I didn’t let Jody get the better of me. We sat there arguing about stuff for 20 minutes. After that Ian sent me to work with Leslie Manim and I rehearsed with all the actors and with Jody.‘
Abdurahman Adams
Tito
“Four Corners encapsulated my own artistic philosophy: Make performance for the people, with the people in their own communities.’
Written by Hofmeyr Scholtz who wrote the screenplay with Terence Hammond, Four Corners is produced by Cindy Gabriel and Genevieve Hofmeyr. The executive producers are Marvin Saven, Ian Gabriel, Basil Ford and Trishana Thevnarain.
Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/78358058.
