Shona Films » BLOG

In Darkness
15, 145 mins
Is another film about the horrors of Nazism and the triumph of the human spirit really necessary? No. But the Polish director Agnieszka Holland and the screenwriter David F Shamoon’s film is an exception. It’s a distinguished drama because it depicts ordinary life lived by real, complex and compromised people caught up in the nightmare of the Holocaust. This is based on a true story about a petty criminal, anti-semite and sewer worker, Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz), who lives in Nazi-occupied Lvov, Poland. When he comes across a group of Jews hiding in the sewers, he sees a chance to make some money. There’s no easy moralism here, and no attempt to shock. It’s an honest film about what we will and won’t do to survive. CL

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
15, 150 mins
A film set in rural Turkey, with a centrepiece dinner in a shabby village hut, pondering life, death and yoghurt? No wonder critics went potty for Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Anatolian road movie at Cannes. Exquisitely shot, this is bliss for film fans who prize composition and pace above anything really happening, as a prosecutor, a doctor and a policeman lead a crew through the night in search of a murder victim’s body. A bit like the first 20 minutes of No Country for Old Men stretched to more than two hours, Ceylan’s leisurely script allows characters to develop subtly, until you realise that, somehow, their worries and woes have crept under your skin. This is a masterclass in patient film-making that deserves to be seen on the big screen. JD

THE CRAFT

marktonderai — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 11:04:22 +0000

HOW DO YOU WRITE TEXT INTO A SCREENPLAY?

When you’re trying to save page counts how do you do it? For ages I wrote it like this

ON CELL
Call me now!

Now not only does this waste space but it also ruins the flow of the page.

So now with a huge nod to Harlan Coben (whose novel CAUGHT I just read which is very good. A true page turner in the real sense of the word.) I want to show you my new way.

So it goes like this.

Zoe looks around for Gary. Her phone buzzes. A new text. WHERE ARE YOU?

She thumbs a response back: WAITING FOR YOU OUTSIDE.

So this works because it doesn’t ruin the flow of the line. The other way bumps and takes you out of the moment.

I always think that your write TWO sorts of screenplays. A READING one whose sole purpose is to make people want to sign on to the project. This is purely about the enjoyment of the read. The second type is a PRODUCTION screenplay which is marked up with scene numbers and revision pages. The Production script has all of the ‘smoke and mirrors’ removed. By that I mean for example I will use smell in my screenplays. Like so:

He was six. And smelt six. of dirt and chocolate.

See. Now that’s a description which works well in a READING script but not in a PRODUCTION one.

Must talk a little bit about the book and Harlan in general. I pretty much read everything he does. He’s one of my must reads, up there with Pelecanos. It’s his ability to twist and turn plot without leaving you confused. But he does that thing which in my mind is the essence of great writing: every character is so rich they could be the subject of their own book or movie. His book CAUGHT is interesting because at it’s about CYBER SLANDER. Which of course is so easy to do now. Want to besmirch anyone’s name? Start an internet rumor and watch it grow. Thematically it deals with grief and forgiveness and the need to move on.

KONY 2012

marktonderai — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 10:47:49 +0000

KONY 2012

As an African (well half African) and also as someone who believes in telling stories about the diaspora I have to say something about all of this.

I have been to Uganda. I went there in the 1990’s as part of a documentary team the BBC sent back to report on the money raised by Comic Relief and how it was been spent. I met a man called Will Day who worked for Care International and traveled to a town called Gulu. Every morning we would drive with the army to the border and then be escorted into southern Sudan and meet people who lived a refugee camp. I would talk to them about their lives and then these would be filed into a report and sent back to London.

To say it was a humbling experience is putting it mildly. It moved me greatly. The Hope that I saw, in those conditions was truly inspiring. So while having been to Uganda and lived in Zimbabwe, I could never claim to be an expert nor an authority on the NGO/Aid matter.

But the first thing I need to say there is no good guy or bad guy in my narrative.

The folks at Visible Children are not bad people. In fact the opposite. What they have done is remarkable. To bring to the fore an awareness of Africa is something I support. Now of course if I want to be critical I can be. Have they over simplified a complex situation? Sure. Maybe even slanted it their way? Sure. But is that not what Fox news does? What about the White Man’s burden? What about the idea it further enforces the idea of Africans as unable to help themselves? Or the fact that in essence Kony’s real venomous days are well behind him and he’s a fading evil? What about Obama? By sending military advisors into Uganda is he validating Museveni? And is the timing, in an election year, coming rom the man that rid the World of Osama Bin Laden, accident or design?

So do you see my point? I could go on and on and on with my questions and accusations. But this is a waste of time and detracts from the true essence of what I believe we should really be doing and that is having an internal debate with our conscience.

It’s a film and as I realize films are so subjective. A great film can change the way we think. A great film asks a question about our humanity. A great film moves you. A great film asks questions about self. Now don’t get me wrong I am not saying the Kony film is a great film but frankly for me, it did tick one of the above criteria.

There are lots of debates online about what the video is and is not, should or should be. But people are missing the point. I think instead of getting lost in the cloud of chatter around the film, they should be trying to personalize the experience. By doing that they should be asking one thing: what does the video say about me? What questions about me bubble up?

To illustrate what I mean I will use Obama as an example. When Obama was elected, sure the bigger narrative was about a democrat getting elected but to me as a black man I personalized his victory (as most black people did.) There was no frontier anymore. No glass ceiling. Something changed in me when he got elected. It said to me that all bets were off.

I can not tell you how liberated I felt. And how that is made me who I am today.

So watching the video what did it say about me?

It made me realize that unless Africans start to work at solving our problems we are sunk. Why didn’t the Kony 2012 idea originate from the mind of an African and as the wonderful blogger Malaka put it, ‘The people at fault for not bringing Kony to justice are Africans.’ I know there are some wonderful people on the ground all across Africa but what about the diaspora in the West? What are we really doing?

I spoke to my great friend and mentor Onye Kachi Wambu of the Charity Score4Africa in London (http://www.score4africa.org/?p=home). He’s a man whose temperance and wisdom I greatly respect. He said something to me. ‘As Africans we shouldn’t be waiting for NGO’s to save us.’ He told me that NGO’s spend almost 200 million pounds in Africa. A lot sure, but check this out, Ghanaians (just Ghanaians that is) send almost 1.2 billion pounds back to Africa to relatives! See where I’m going with this? Onye-Kachi made some wonderful points to me. One was that you only had peace when there was a balance of power.

I remember reading an article in Time on the Nature of Evil. And it talked about a mother in Washington who smokes crack cocaine and then while she’s high goes and murders her kids. Who do you blame? The mother? The farmer in Columbia who grew the drugs? The dealer? The point the article was making was that Evil isn’t singular anymore, it’s a collective. In Africa dictators exist on a food chain of support. But what the video did was show that conversely so does good operate in the same way.

Ultimately what I took away from the Kony 2012 video was this. The Invisible Children people are trying to make a better World. And I can not fault them on that. For me the real question was what am I doing about trying to make the World better?

WILL SOUTH AFRICA GO THE WAY OF ZIMBABWE? SUNDAY TIMES

marktonderai — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 05:50:55 +0000

WHEN FW de Klerk retired from politics in 1997, it seemed implausible that the former South African president would see the hustings again.

As the man who abolished apartheid and, with Nelson Mandela, won the Nobel peace prize for negotiating a peaceful transition to democracy, he has remained resolutely upbeat, saying that whatever the blemishes on the new South Africa, it is a far better and freer country than it was.

Now, at the age of 75, de Klerk is launching himself into an all-out campaign to try to prevent the ruling African National Congress (ANC) from, in effect, tearing up the constitutional settlement on which the new South Africa is built.

The release last week of ANC policy documents in advance of the party’s June conference showed that it is planning a radical agenda. In a key document, Jeff Radebe, the ANC’s policy chief and justice minister, declared that this year, the ANC’s centenary, should mark a “watershed” — a fundamental break with the past.

“We need a vision for a second transition that must focus on the social and economic transformation of South Africa over the next 30 to 50 years,” he said.

Under Mandela, the ANC put aside its long history of armed struggle against the apartheid state to forge a new democratic and decentralised constitution that guaranteed the property rights of the white minority and kept Afrikaans and English as two of the 11 official languages.

With about two-thirds of the seats in parliament, the ANC has governed South Africa since the first free election in 1994, but it has not abused its dominance to try to revise the terms of the settlement. Nor has it challenged the powers of provincial governments. The opposition Democratic Alliance, a party with its roots in white anti-apartheid politics, governs the Western Cape with great efficiency.

Radebe’s “vision” would change all that. Among his proposals are cuts in the powers of the provinces; the establishment of a single national police force under an ANC minister; and the suppression of Afrikaans as an official language.

They also include the introduction of a “national health initiative” to give South Africa its own national health service, which would be the first in a developing country; the imposition of labour controls so that no racial group can hold more than its demographic share of jobs; radical land reform; and a 50% profit tax on mining firms.

Other proposals are the forced sale of newspapers and their allocation by the state to new owners, and a review of the role of the judiciary including the Constitutional Court. As Radebe put it: “There are no holy cows.”

The existing constitution is described as merely a compromise document the ANC had to sign in order to establish itself in power: its time is over.

Behind Radebe’s proposals lurks the ANC’s long-standing commitment to the “National Democratic Revolution” — a Soviet-inspired notion of how socialism will be built in one country — South Africa — which was set aside in Mandela’s deal with de Klerk.

“The key is simply this idea that the constitution was just a temporary compromise,” said Dave Steward of the De Klerk Foundation. “For us it was a binding contract. De Klerk has always said that he didn’t surrender power to the ANC but to the new, democratic constitution. This whole country and all its economic and social relationships, are based upon that constitution.”

Dene Smuts, the Democratic Alliance’s justice spokesman, said she was “shocked and stunned” by the notion that property rights were now regarded as easily dispensable.

The ANC, she said was “hell-bent on undermining the independence of the judiciary”. When judges came out with decisions the ANC did not like, it attacked them as “counter-revolutionaries”.

De Klerk came out guns blazing, claiming he felt “a fiduciary responsibility” for the constitution that he and Mandela had agreed. He said he had “realised full well that the ANC might one day withdraw from its solemn undertakings” but had felt he must “seize [the] unique opportunity for a just and honourable settlement”.

The ANC, he said, “now wants to jeopardise all this. It imagines that it can write off the influence of free market democracies and align itself instead with China, Russia and its friends in Cuba”.

Helen Zille, the leader of the Democratic Alliance, called the ANC proposals “a con trick to mask the ANC’s failures in governance” and committed her party to all-out defence of the constitution. Lindiwe Mazibuko, the alliance’s parliamentary leader, pointed out that Winnie Mandela had recently accused her former husband, Nelson, of “selling out the blacks” by agreeing to the 1996 constitution. “Today’s ANC doesn’t quite have the guts to attack Mandela,” Mazibuko said, “but the idea is the same. They are attacking his legacy and they are doing so because they have become a party of racial nationalists.”

Hermann Giliomee, the Afrikaans historian, said: “People just don’t learn from history.When the ANC introduced affirmative action into the civil service they said, don’t worry, we’ll still have a competent civil service. But in fact we don’t. Similarly, they said, don’t worry, the ANC will always respect language rights. Well, they don’t. The lesson is you just can’t trust them. We made an honest and honourable deal and it has been fully observed. And now they just want to tear it up.”

There are fears of violence if the compromise on which the country is based is up-ended. The ANC, for its part, seems determined to press ahead.

Its opponents expect it to try to pack the Constitutional Court with pro-ANC judges and take steps to curb judicial independence. This would undoubtedly be declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court. And, with 65.9% of the seats in parliament, the ANC is just short of the two-thirds majority needed to legislate constitutional amendments.

Its record in government is not impressive. Unemployment is nearly 40% and South Africa has generated inequality as the new black elite seeks to emulate, or exceed, the white privilege of the apartheid years.

Despite this, the ANC exudes a blithe confidence, as if determined to push its changes through. A battle royal is in prospect — perhaps even the final battle for control of the country.

THE 1ST ACT OF HUSH…

marktonderai — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 20:36:56 +0000

Notice what we cut and left out…HUSH-Shooting_Script – 28 Aug ACT 1

MUSINGS FROM THE SUNSHINE STATE

marktonderai — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 20:33:02 +0000

I am trying. Trying to write this this thing more regularly. I hope people read it. I hope people enjoy it. So where to start? Okay. My movie HATES or HOUSE AT THE END OF THE STREET. I saw a trailer yesterday at Technicolor on 6040 Sunset. Love saying that. It’s another one of my goals that I can cross off. I still have a few left.

Sew a ninja suit.
Learn a magic trick.
Be able to sing Hotel California on the guitar.

Back to the trailer. Gotta say that Relativity (who are putting the movie out in September 20^th…have I told you it stars JEN LAWRENCE of the soon to be released HUNGER GAMES)…the trailer is truly awesome and I tell you now, honestly there is nothing out there that is like it. Honestly. I am not bullshitting you. It is really, really good. When will you see it? Watch this space…

Did my back in yesterday. Took my son for a run around Griffith Park in his Jeep stroller. Yes. He has a Jeep Stroller with an i-baby. Don’t ask. Anyway didn’t stretch because he was moaning and then what happens. The back goes. Taken some of that heavy duty shit they prescribe over here. Hello.

Okay. On to the last thing. Been reading this guy. Victor Gischler. First heard of him because of his run on the Punisher. Welcome to the Bayou. Just loved the twists and turns. Reminded me of a proper version of the DEFIANT ONES. So I bought GUN MONKEYS. And now c’mon you know when a book starts off with this line…

‘I turned the Chrysler onto the Florida Turnpike with Rollo Kramer’s headless body in the trunk and all the time I’m thinking I should have put some plastic down.’

It’s gonna be good right? Anyway it just gets better from there. It’s good sharp prose. The plot moves and his worlds are populated by weak men trying to be better men and failing. Great stuff.

TEST SCREENING OF MY NEW MOVIE

marktonderai — Thu, 19 May 2011 04:44:33 +0000

Okay…so less than a week to go.

WAKE UP DEAD

marktonderai — Tue, 17 May 2011 12:19:46 +0000

We’ve just optioned the rights to the novel WAKE UP DEAD by the disgustingly talented ROGER SMITH. His first book MIXED BLOOD is great. Having fun adapting it as it’s such a good book my job is easy!