Blog Post No.1

I’ve just started a pulp fiction magazine with my friend Hannes. It’s called Jungle Jim. After quite some work, we’ve started getting submissions from all over Africa. Awesome! Some great writing. But it seems that no one remembers what was great about pulp, and why one would try take, at least it’s good elements, and publish stories inspired by them. For me, what’s so wonderful about pulp is that they’re STORY STORY STORY DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA. But what about subtley, you cry! What about nuance? It just seems to me that we could all be reminded what makes a story (character x change=story) tick these days. Yes, even you, big blockbuster action films.

And talking about films which are not made with lots of money: I just watched SKELETONS, a UK indie about a pair of dowdy exorcists who help unearth the buried secrets of ordinary people. Flawed, but a lot of fun. And ultimately really understood the themes it dealt with.

Oh, and where have I been since I last posted… Well, I was in Rotterdam for their Producer’s Lab, connected to CineMart. Great experience – I think I may finally getting the hang of this networking thing. Namely, enjoy yourself. And if you’ve had enough, don’t force it. Go see a movie. Actually, got to see far less films than I intended, not all of them good. The highlight was definitely Jan Svankmejer’s SURVIVING LIFE (not to mention getting a glimpse of the old magic man himself – ‘he’s so cute!’ says Alicia, and you know, he actually is) and also getting to see some (if regrettably not all) of ATTENBERG in the film library.

Tok Tokkie travels are not over – I’ll be in New York next month at a financing forum specially for South African films. So watch out USA. Or at least, NYC DVD stores with good Orson Welles collections watch out… I WILL ask for Don Quixote.

PS I’ve been good. I’ve only seen The Social Network twice more since my three day binge. Bring on Black Swan and True Grit…