Here's another phantasmagorial column from Dr. Sotha down in South Africa. Father Geek loves posting these reports. Of all the international columns we post these from Africa are the ones that have info that you just never see any where. The Doctor and his delightful nurse staff are doing the world a fine favor with these weekly reports. Read and enjoy...

Hi there palookas, DR. SOTHA returns for another week of (eerily potent) valium for all my "happy" readers. This week you'll find all you need to heal those ailing bones with a good dose of carnal African film lore (now there's a mouthful).

You know the "drill" by now, I want the African film community to send me their unique perspectives to Africaaicn@hotmail.com

Nurse, in some African countries that's against the law.

SOUTH AFRICA

* Dickie Rebrov is shooting a pseudo documentary on digital called "RED DUNES". The story/theory goes something like this (Please e-mail me back if I get it wrong Dickie - DR. SOTHA) Dickie and his crew are picking ten people randomly in the greater Johannesburg area, off the streets if you will, and should they comply, Dickie will stick a camera in a room and pair the 10 up in separate rooms for 24 hours. The results from each room will each play a segment, and "hopefully" thread into a theme about human nature and voyeurism. Dickie calls it a cross between "Big Brother" and "Time Code 2000", specifically citing Figis's effort. He was blown by the concept even though he hasn't even seen the film.

* The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela, a two hour doccie produced by Indra De Lanerolle of South African media company Clear and David Fanning of USA-based Storystreet, has been nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy in the Outstanding Background / Analysis of a Single Current Story category. Broadcast in South Africa as Mandela The First Accused, the doccie was directed by Cliff Bestall, written by John Carlin, researched by Sara Blecher, production managed by Lindy Wilson and edited by Alan Charlton. "We are all proud and honoured to be selected as nominees from the very best of the year's documentaries broadcast on American television," says De Lanerolle.

* The judging process for this year's MultiChoice's prestigious VUKA! Awards 2000 competition for Public Service Announcements (PSAs) is divided into two panels. The first panel consists of a judge for each entry category in both the Professional and Newcomer divisions. The second and principal panel will judge all the shortlisted entries and consist of Nkwenkwe Nkomo (Group-Deputy Chairman of FCB South Africa), filmmaker Katinka Heyns of Sonneblom Films, Lindi Bridget Ndebele (Deputy Director with the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology), Chris Moerdyk (media and marketing consultant and mentor, corporate presenter and media analyst), Brigalia Bam (Chairperson for the Independent Electoral Commission) and Kole Omotoso (Professor of Literature at the University of the Western Cape and a leading African writer). The judges on the first panel for the Newcomer division are Jackie Le Cordeur (Editor/Animation), Sean Miros (Camera), Maganthrie Pillay (Director), Shaheda Sayed (Producer/Client Service), Murray Anderson (Sound), Dr Edna van Haarte (Grassroots Communications), and Taweni Gondwe (Script/Creative Director). For the Professional division they are: Joe Sinibolo (Editor/Animation), Harmon Cusack (Camera), Lisa Key (Producer/Director), Dan Robert (Director), Ted Lukes (Sound), Tselane Tambo (Grassroots Communications), and Solly Segalo (Script/Creative Director). Vuka! is a social responsibility initiative by MultiChoice to encourage filmmakers to produce PSAs for causes that are close to their hearts. For more info contact The Full Circle Corporate Communications on behalf of MultiChoice on telephone 021-685-3260, fax 021-685-3276 or email jfcircle@mweb.co.za .

* Principal photography has just started outside Johannesburg on The Sorcerer s Apprentice, a film starring Robert Davi and Kelly LeBrock. Directed by David Lister, the film is being produced by Paul Matthews for Peakviewing Productions, an independent UK company. Written by Brett Morris, the story tells of how the evil sorceress Morgana (played by Kelly LeBrock) returns every hundred years to claim Fingall s talisman from Merlin, with which she intends to destroy the world. Young South African actor Byron Taylor co-stars. This is a classic story of good battling to overcome the power of the dark side and will feature lots of action (including a dynamic BMX bike chase sequence) and a plethora of special effects (Kelly Le Brock mmmm, "Woman in Red" ahhhh "Weird Science" - I once loved this woman - DR. SOTHA)

* Sadiah Smith has been appointed as Registration Co-ordinator for Sithengi, the Southern African International Film & TV Festival, to be held at the Spier Estate in the Cape from 13 to 16 November. If you have any questions regarding registration at Sithengi and how to take advantage of the 15 percent Early Bird Discount, please contact Sadiah Smith on: Tel: +27 21 430-8160; Fax: +27 21 430-8186; email: registration@sithengi.co.za .

* Peter Born is working on a film, part of which takes place in the Sudan, and would like to get in contact with African filmmakers to discuss their process, the logistics of shooting in certain parts of Africa, etc. Anyone who can help in this regard is asked to email him at pjborn@hotmail.com.

* The car theft saga Gone in 60 Seconds (Nicolas Cage / Angelina Jolie) has retained its number one position at the South African box office. Jim Carrey's new comedy, Me, Myself & Irene, has gone straight to the number two spot in its first week of release. The Patriot has moved to position three, having made R4 702,376 since its release on 14 July. Meanwhile, Mission Impossible 2, which is at number four and has been on circuit for six weeks, has already clocked up R13 169 176. The dance drama Center Stage is the fifth most popular film this week. (Where are the South African films climbing up the charts?? - DR. SOTHA)

* The Istituto Italiano di Cultura is proud to present the second edition of the Italian film festival - A Window on Italian Cinema 2000. Admission to the festival is free of charge. The festival will run from 18 - 24 August in Pretoria at the Ster-Kinekor Cinema Nouveau in Brooklyn Mall, and from 1-7 September in Cape Town at the Ster-Kinekor Cinema Nouveau on the V&A Waterfront. This edition of the festival will showcase some of the most notable works of the Italian film director Nanni Moretti.

* At the 4th Annual Hollywood Film Festival Award held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel last week, special honours were presented to Richard Dreyfuss and Morgan Freeman "for their contributions to the art of film". German director Joseph Vilmaier took home the Best Feature prize for Marlene, a film about legendary screen star, Marlene Dietrich. Kaspar Rostrup of Denmark won Best European Feature for A Place Nearby, about a staunchly devoted mother's love for her autistic son. Best Latin Film went to Noel Quinones for Flight of Fancy, while Craig Brewer's The Poor and Hungry garnered Best Digital Movie. South Africa's very own Jonathan Liebesman won in the short film category with his film called "Genesis and Catastrophe" which opened the festival.

NORTH AFRICA

* Tongonese filmmaker Ligo Diomede will direct "The Great Divide" about a gypsey family's journey through the heart of the continent. They meet several characters along the way as they search for a place they can finally call home. Among the characters that they come to meet are an old superstitious black woman, who insists she is their spiritual guide, a village tribesman who wants out of his tribe so he can explore the rest of the world, and a Hippie still stuck in the flower decade of the 60's. Louis Montes (who is part Gypsey himself) wrote.

* This comes from "Marda" - "Allah Tantou" (God's Will) Allah Tantou is the first African film to confront the immense personal and political costs of the widespread human rights abuses on the continent. It follows filmmaker David Achkar's search for his father, his father's search for himself inside a Guinean prison and Africa's search for a new beginning amid the disillusionment of the post-independence era. One of the most courageous and controversial films of recent years, Allah Tantou speaks in an unabashedly personal voice not often heard in African cinema. The life of Marof Achkar, David's father, can be seen as emblematic of much recent African history. In 1958, his countryman, Sekou Touri declared Guinea the first independent French African colony and became a hero of Pan-Africanism. Marof Achkar, a leading figure in the Ballets Africains, served as U.N. ambassador for the new government. In 1968, Achkar was suddenly recalled, charged with treason and vanished into the notorious Camp Boiro prison. His family was exiled and, only after Touri's death in 1984, did they learn of his execution in 1971.

In a cinematic tradition which has privileged the calm collective voice of the griot, Allah Tantou speaks with the fragmented, uncertain rhythms of the individual conscience. Achkar juxtaposes diverse, sometimes contradictory texts - documentary, newsreel, dramatizations, photos, journals - to deny us a single, authoritative narrative space. Allah Tantou argues through its example that vigorous debate, candor and self-criticism are the pre-conditions for Africa's political and spiritual renewal. DR. SOTHA here, I uncovered some quotes from some of the critics who praised it upon its release."Wrenching as well as cathartic, it required a special kind of courage to make this film." -- Philadelphia Inquirer -- "Makes intense links between personal and public history...A powerful tool for reassessing the recent African past."

* It's the learning hour with"Rigobert Song" we start with a film from Madagascar called "Angano...Angano..." (Tales from Madagascar). Take it away "Rigobert". Angano...Angano... pioneers a new approach to ethnographic filmmaking, at once scrupulously non-interpretative yet deeply evocative. The central character in Angano...Angano... is the oral tradition itself which passes down the wisdom of the ancestors, the "ear's inheritance," through myths and folktales.Venerable storytellers recount for the camera and their listeners the founding myths of Malagasy culture. The filmmakers do not dramatize these tales; rather they document story-telling itself by placing it in its social and geographical context. The tales flow into and out of stunning shots of the daily Malagasy life which gave them life and which they in turn explain.

* "Divine Carcasse" is an unusual hybrid, a half fictional, half ethnographic film. It is a study in cultural contrast, between a desacralized, materialistic European view of reality and an animist, pre-industrial African one. Belgian director Dominique Loreau has described her film as "an encounter with another culture, another way of relating to the world, objects and death - one that challenges our own relationships to the world."

This film shows the literal metamorphosis of one of the most prosaic artifacts of Western culture, into a revered fetish of the coastal people of Benin. In so doing, it provides a concise lesson about the uneasy encounter between European technology and African tradition offering insight into some of our most deep-seated ideas about economics, art, anthropology and religion. In the opening shot, a mysterious cargo ship approaches the Benin coast much, one imagines, as did the brigantines of the first European explorers. In its hold, however, is a 1955 Peugeot imported to Cotonou by Simon, an expatriate European philosophy teacher. His friends deride the car as an unreliable means of transport but relish its nostalgia value but their view of the past extends no further than their own youth in the 50's. Of course, a car can be a fetish object in European culture; a friend suggests Simon can use it to pick up women. But it remains primarily a disposable commodity to these complacent members of the consumer society who drive along singing, "My life is on credit and in stereo." The philosophical ambitions of this deceptively straightforward film are suggested by Simon who is preparing a lesson on Plato's "Myth of the Cave." In a remarkable prefiguring of cinema, Plato described ordinary perception as confusing the shadows on the walls of a cave with the object passing by outside which produce them, the " things in themselves". A small fetish object above Simon's desk reminds us, however, of an alternative African metaphysics which sees the natural world as suffused with immanent noumenosity revealing itself through objects, people and gods.

The film's focus rapidly shifts from the European expatriate community to urban, modernizing Africa, a transitional space between these two worldviews. Simon in frustration gives the decrepit car to Joseph, his cook, who hopes to ride it to financial success and independence. When he shows it off in his natal village, the crowd is shocked that the French call such cars "ancestors" since they look at their own ancestors as "guides and protectors." Joseph's wife, fearing the villagers' envy, asks for the ancestors' intervention on the grounds that the car will lift the fortunes of the entire family line. But Joseph's taxi business is a failure and during a "ghost dance" or egungun ritual the ancestors tell him that his recently deceased maternal uncle has cursed him and must be placated. The ancestors still don't seem much help; Joseph is forced to sell the car to a garage which discards it as scrap. At this point the film's fictional narrative disappears entirely to be replaced by a nearly documentary study of an actual Beninois metalworker making a fetish commissioned by the village of Ouassou. The film ends when the statue is accepted or recognized by the joyful villagers and joins the other fetishes in the zangbeto society supposedly a kind of night watch for the village. Dark falls but the fetish's eyes blaze - perhaps amazed at its metamorphosis from a car into a god who sees in the dark. Surprisingly, it is Jean Genet who makes this point in the film's epigraph: "A work of art is not for the generation of children, it is offered to the countless generations of the past, who approve or reject it." It may seem to Africans, perhaps, too obvious a point to make. It deliberately does not ask us to chose between African and Western perspectives but to recognize both as equally valid and equally fictional. Variety crowed-- "An offbeat idea, this quasi-nonfiction narrative about a European car passed from owner to owner - and from culture to culture - is more about communities than individuals...An unusual take on African or Third World economic/cultural currents."

AFRICAN AMERICAN

* Laurence Fishburne's directorial debut, Once in the Life, has been acquired by Lions Gate. The studio announced that it will release the movie in late October of this year. Fishburne, director and star of the movie, adapted the film from his stage play, Riff Raff. The movie was produced by The Shooting Gallery. Fishburne is known for his leading roles in The Matrix and Othello and for playing Ike Turner in What's Love Got To Do With It.

* Comedian Eddie Griffin will team with Denzel Washington in the New Line Cinema film "John Q." In the film, Washington plays a man who takes a hospital emergency room hostage after his son has been denied a heart transplant by the insurance company. Griffin will play an emergency room patient who becomes an ally to Washington's character. "John Q" is slated to come out sometime next year.

AFRICAN COAXIAL

* Production and new media company Underdog (producer of the documentary Metamorphosis: The Remarkable Journey of Granny Lee), has signed a deal with Endemol Productions SA to do the websites for some of its television programmes. These include the business case study programme, Boardroom Dancing, and the youth motivational show, Loud and Proud.

* Zoe Elton is programming a music doc on Ladysmith Black Mambazo for this year's Mill Valley Film Festival (5 to 15 October) in California and is looking for a music-related short (about 15 to 30 mins in length) to program with it. Anyone knowing of any recent (last 18 months, preferably) short film (16mm, 35mm or Beta SP) which might be an appropriate partner for this is asked to contact Elton on email zelton@well.com or write to The Director of Programming, Mill Valley Film Festival, 38 Miller Ave, Suite 6 Mill Valley, CA 94941 USA.

* The Redd's Fashion In Da House will take place on the 2 September at the Electric Workshop and will be a fashion show with a difference as the biggest names in SA Kwaito/House will be strutting their stuff both up on stage as well as down the catwalk.With Kwaito/House currently maintaining its status as South Africa s most popular and explosive urban dance movement, the event will feature live performances by a host of the biggest names in this genre of music today including: Boom Shaka, E smile, CAZ, The Channel 0 Crew, Y-FM crew Fresh, Bad Boy T, Kabhzela, Rude Boy Paul and Phindi, Glen Lewis and DJ's at Work (Christos & Da-Vinci). The featured bands and celebrity artists will each represent and model a specific designer label on the catwalk as well as performing on stage during the live music sections of the evening. Other activities during the evening include a movie theatre, Dance Shows, Laser Shows, Pyrotechnics and a massive screen, all carrying the sponsors branding. The event will be held at the Electric Workshop in Johannesburg on the 2 September is being produced AE Productions. For any queries contact: Jacky or Jerome , AE productions: 011-728 3448 \ 082 659 3015.

Question and Answer time. "Bone T" got the answer right last week, John Singleton was the youngest director to ever get nominated for an Academy Award for his landmark African-American film "Boyz n the Hood". "Bone T" (a writer) is discovering a world where 6 fingers (surgically attached) on each hand allow him to increase his typing capacity to an unbelievable 1000 words per minute. Book deals and endorsements are currently in negotiations.

Question for the week: "What is South Africa's (and woeful I might add) current exchange rate against the American Dollar"?

End of the Line cats. Blood pressure dropping, Pupils dilated, cardiac rhythm irregular, prepare to evacuate soul.but before you do, do e-mail me your thongs, broncoscopes, lingerie, tweezers, handcuffs and phlegm swabs to Africaaicn@hotmail.com

DR. SOTHA OUT