CJP Film Citichat 9 February 2001

CITICHAT 5/2001 - 9 February 2001


CJP Film on the “Struggle for the City”

Something about a city project with a difference this week.

An exciting project the CJP has been working on over the past year and which is now nearing fruition, has been the production of a short documentary on the history and growth of the City Centre. It is part of a far larger tourism initiative we are involved in and which will be made public fairly shortly.

Another record of the rise and fall of the city? Yawn!

No ways! This is to be a film with a difference, a big difference. A great deal of background and history of the city is available but, almost without exception, it has been produced from a "white" perspective. This is obviously because the white sector has historically been entrepreneur, developer, financier, businessman, mining magnate, politician, newspaper editor, councillor, mayor, etc. etc. Thus, traditional documentation all the way from the discovery of gold, the growth of the boisterous mining camp into a Victorian mining town to the Edwardian industrial city, the colonial city, the apartheid city, the whole explosive growth right through to the seventies and eighties and even the urban blight and decline, has, generally, been through one worldview, a decidedly pale one at that! Much of this is probably also still taught in schools and universities and is easily accessible from a wide source of literature.

But what about the perspective of millions of ordinary people whose "blood sweat and tears" actually made it all possible? What about the people who physically created and supported the city through their endeavours. The miner and the messenger, the labourer on the building sites, the 'houseboy' and the 'nannies', the washermen and the shebeen owner, the pennywhistler and the jazz musicians, the artists and the tsotsis? What about the stories of those that lived in the city in the sky during the apartheid regime? What about the conflict, the pass laws, the experiences of common people - experiences both inhuman and humourous, the richness of the urban tapestry yet the starkness that made the city what it is? Who was really responsible for all the energy both above and below ground? Johannesburg's history is a cultural kaleidoscope filled with a pot-pourrie of fascinating people.

We have long felt that without documenting these issues and the people themselves, a great deal of the cultural attraction of the city and its cultural diversity, will be lost. Indeed, Much has been lost already.

Hence, "Johannesburg, The Untold Story", (actually the name has not yet been finalised!) a 24 minute documentary which provides real people's stories against the background of the growth and development of the 'City of Gold'.

The documentary is being produced for us by Jane and Beata Lipman.

Jane returned from exile in 1997 after nine years with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a respected news and current affairs producer and writer. Her award winning films on Bosnia and South Africa won Director’s Awards at Monte Carlo’s Golden Nymph News and Current Affairs Awards and the Columbus Ohio Video and TV Awards. Since her return to South Africa she has directed the 48 minute drama documentary “The Great Escape” for SABC 1 which is currently being rewritten as a two hour feature film and has made films about Angola, Wouter Basson and his Canadian connections and Corruption in South Africa. In 1999 she made two half hour films for the SABC in the run up to the election.

Beata Lipman also returned to South Africa after a number of years working with the BBC in Britain and has made a number of notable documentaries including ‘Mandela the Man’ and ‘Walter Sisulu, Father of the Nation.’

But it was really their one-hour documentary “Sol Plaatje: A Man for our Times” which caught my eye as having been produced with the sensitivity and uncompromising honesty that is so necessary for films of this genre. Launched by Minister of Education Kader Asmal. It focuses on an early hero of the liberation struggle and an important writer. Sol Plaatje is now being commemorated in high schools throughout the country with VHS tapes of the film and is currently in great demand on the international film festival circuit.

Some international funding provided the initial impetus and much smaller local financial support will enable completion in two to three months by which time we will release how we intend to use the film in the larger tourism initiative.

Other news for noting is the City Centre Investor's Briefing to be held on Wednesday March 28 - details will follow in the next few weeks, in the meantime diarise the date, will probably be breakfast to about 11h00.