NAF FILM PROGRAMME

Adaptation of JM Coetzee’s novel Disgrace, starring John Malkovich headlining the premières at National Arts Festival.

New releases, unflinching documentaries and seldom-seen eye-openers feature on the film festival programme of the forthcoming National Arts Festival.

Headlining the premières is the adaptation of JM Coetzee’s novel Disgrace, starring John Malkovich. The film has already won the Best Film awards at the Toronto Film Festival and the Abu Dhabi Film Festival.

South African films getting their first public airings include Savo Tufegdzic’s Crime, starring Kevin Smith; Anton Kotze’s hallucinogenic Safari Obscura; Darrell James Roodt and Andrew Worsdale’s zombie chiller Foreign Devils; and Heinrich Dahms’ disturbing Scum.

The Festival programme includes a special focus on the Philippines, which has a long and complex cinematic history. Ten films will be screened and Filipino filmmakers and critics will be available for discussion. Another package reviews the oeuvre of American Joseph Strick. His adaptations of James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Ma and Ulysses as well as Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer are scheduled.

The filmic take on Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf by Strick’s colleague, Fred Haines, is added for good measure. Strick’s uncomfortable Interviews with Mai Lai Veterans dominates a programme of documentaries. The list includes Jacopetti and Prosperi’s Africa Addio, Peter Watkins’ anti-war classics Culloden and The War Game and Glauber Rocha’s analysis of slavery and revolution in Africa, The Lion has Seven Heads.

Uli Edel’s The Baader Meinhof Complex, Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, Nicolas Roeg’s Puffball, Isobel Coixet’s Elegy, and the Pakistani eye-opener Zibakhana are among the new films on the programme.

The National Arts Festival is sponsored by Standard Bank, The Eastern Cape Government, The National Arts Council, The National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund and The Sunday Independent. It runs from July 2 to 11, 2009, in Grahamstown. For more information visit www.nationalartsfestival.co.za