CLAIRE ANGELIQUE FOR NAF

Filmmaker Claire Angelique is the first female winner of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for film.

Her new feature film Palace Of Bone is to premier at the 2011 National Arts Festival, Grahamstown.

Claire Angelique's début feature film My Black Little Heart saw Durban city's underbelly ripped open. This film has been hailed as one of the most daring and ground breaking films to have come out of South Africa.

Set and shot in Durban, My Black Little Heart pummels the viewer into a world where Internet porn on Durban's beachfront meets Nigerian voodoo in the inner city and a young girl from the wrong side of the track-marks finds herself stuck in a hazy sub-city seaside vortex of decrepit flats, poisoned streets and abandoned office blocks littered with self mutilators, ex-cons, gangsters, street delinquents, hustlers and addicts.

“Telling the tale of a heroin user/dancer, My Black Little Heart, is beautifully shot by Anthony Dod Mantle (behind the camera of many of Lars Von Triers films),” says the publicity material. “Using mostly non-actors, the film's dark subject matter finds its counterpoint in its dreamlike and non-linear narrative. It chronicles both a deeply personal narrative and a city in transition. With a soundtrack by Chris Letcher and a resonating local narrative, the film presents a thoroughly original view of the world. Durban has never looked more beautiful or more ugly.”