Father Geek here with SOTHA'S Africa-AICN column for this week. The good Doc is going to CANNES for us so look forward to some great interviews and reviews of some of the non-mainstream films like he gave us from Rotterdam a couple of months back. Below he asks for your help securing lodgings at the over attended fest, so if you can help him out I'm sure he may have some ancient Dark Continent cure for what ailes you that he could be talked into to sharing with his newfound roomies. In all seriousness give the Doctor a hand here, he can be one entertaining Dude... plus he's got them All Access AICN press badges that just might do his "friends" some good...

I know I'm going out on a limb here (Doctor humor), but who would like to entertain DR.SOTHA for the first weekend of the Cannes Film Festival? Do I have any takers? Thing is my accommodation is only provided for after the first few days, but I'm going from the start. I promise to not perform any unusual (such a broad word that is) operations, umm, make that procedures while I sun it up on the veranda of your riviera apartment. I'm really quite harmless, in fact I've almost never killed a patient under the knife, and when I have, the rat fuck deserved it. So, if you stay in Cannes or are just plain loaded, set me up at your joint, and let's make whoopy.

Takers can e-mail me at AfricaAICN

PS If you're 20-25, female and voluptuous, I'd say you have a better chance of nabbing me for a one off encounter at Cannes. Now onto Africa-AICN you impatient bastards.

SOUTH AFRICA

* Kiyoshi Kurosawa's official Cannes selection "Kairo" (aka "Pulse") has been acquired for theatrical distribution in nearly all English-speaking territories, exception the United Kingdom, by independent production/distribution outfit Distant Horizon from Daiei Co. Ltd. in a low-seven-figure deal. Distant Horizon South African CEO Anant Singh said the company hopes to secure a fall U.S. release for the Japanese-language horror film, which was made on a $3.6 million budget. The film will screen next month in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes International Film Festival. "Kairo" follows an Internet rumor about a ghost Web site. As more and more people tap into the site's frightening images of the dead, a supernatural force controlling it begins to dominate the people's lives. The film stars Haruhiko Kato and Kumiko Aso.

* Among the 29 original pieces of South African film to be screened at the Celebrate South Africa festival to be held in London during April and May are Videovision Entertainment's "The Long Run", Ken Kaplan's "Pure Blood", Teboho Mahlatsi's "Portrait of a Young Man Drowning", Ntshaveni Wa Luruli's "Chikin Biznis", Gavin Hood's "A Reasonable Man", Lindi Wilson's "The Guguletu Seven" and Oliver Schmitz' "Hijack Stories". This six week-long arts, culture and technology festival will take place in venues across London and will feature leading South African singers, dancers, musicians, actors, artists, craftspeople, as well as filmmakers. For more info visit www.celebratesouthafrica.com.

* "Metamorphosis, The Remarkable Journey of Granny Lee", the acclaimed documentary produced by Underdog Entertainment and commissioned by SABC3 is making waves internationally. The film, which made its debut on South African TV screens in July 2000, has been selected for screening at both the prestigious New York Lesbian and Gay Film Festival as well as the up-coming INPUT 2001 international television conference to be hosted in Cape Town in April. Metamorphosis is an hour-long documentary exploring the life of South Africa's most outrageous and notorious drag party-animal, Granny Lee, who, while born a coloured man in Kimberley at the height of Apartheid, died as a "white woman" in 1989. Directed by Underdog Entertainment's Luiz DeBarros the film received much critical acclaim and even spawned a hit compilation CD: Granny Lee's Disco Hits of the 70's and 80's. "It's a great honour that Metamorphosis has been selected from among the best documentary work from around the world, especially considering our very limited local budgets." says writer/director Luiz DeBarros. "For better or worse, we're helping to make Granny Lee a legend, not only in South Africa, but also in the rest of the world. She'd like that,". Since its inception in 1988, the annual New York Lesbian & Gay Film Festival has become one of the most comprehensive forums of international lesbian and gay film and video, and an important exhibition platform for independent film and video makers. The festival provides a professional and public context for the presentation of innovative and challenging work that reflects the broad range of practice and ideas found in contemporary media. The 13th New York Lesbian & Gay Film Festival is taking place from May 31st through till June10th 2001.

* A review of the South African documentary "Main Reef Road" by Neil Sonnekus.

Nicholas Hofmeyr's documentary about the long urban road that cuts from east to west (or vice versa) across the Reef, has some brilliant footage in it. This includes the story of a community activist, a young teenage girl on the run, a woman who has just received her first house from the government, and some very interesting local chinas. The activist, one "Lawrence Rasta Dube", goes from being a seemingly good guy to being out-voted by his community as leader to being jailed for alleged murder to getting out on bail to being shot to becoming a very dead community hero. This is fascinating stuff, except that we don't quite know all the who, where, why, what, when and hows of this story.

The Afrikaans teenager's naïve separatist views are happily exposed, but when she elects to wear a pair of hot pants Hofmeyr is not beyond giving us a good old, low-angled, up-the-fanny shot. That may be her deluded kind of language, but it doesn't give Hofmeyr the right to therefore use it, too. We can quite clearly see from a more neutral shot that she's wearing a very tight pair of shorts, thank you very much. (Huh? - DR.SOTHA)

The woman who receives her house makes no bones about her joy or convictions: You have to work hard to get your house, you have to know how to work your government, and you have to give them at least 45 years to prove their mettle. This mindset, which is hardly white, uptight and suburban, is also not explored any further. As for the local chinas, who have no qualms about showing us what kind of local tobacco they like smoking, they are refreshingly what they are: old-time Reef jollers. That they don't mind being implicated on video for smoking dope could also have been quite interesting, but we are on a much higher mission here. Technically the documentary is well shot and edited, the score by Ian Cohen is excellent and the time-lapse montages only start feeling repetitious towards the end. But "Main Reef Road" seriously suffers that late-20th century malaise called political correctness, and the main problem lies with its point of view. Hofmeyr firstly places himself as narrator and secondly as participant but never talks directly to camera. The voice-over veers between being politically naïve, patronising and expedient. When he deals with the young girl he plaintively says he wanted to ask her all the obvious questions about race and politics but couldn't: she was too wrapped up in her own dreams and illusions. Just exactly what and who the "obvious questions" are for, of course, is the burning question.

The participant side of things does not fare much better. All it really says is that you have a handsome white guy behind a pair of shades puttering across the landscape in that ultimate symbol of a stuck-in-the-Eighties lefty, a battered old VW Beetle. If nothing else, at least the voice-over and auteur can be excised, which could only improve the potentially great other footage. That most of the black speakers do so in Afrikaans has its own implicit ironies, and the rest of the documentary should have gone that way, too. Instead we have a brow-beating honkie with one of those self-denying, mid-Atlantic accents - the Afrikaans word soutpiel has never been more appropriate than here - to confess literally how his heart still bleeds for his country. But where all this pro-RDP (read African National Congress) political correctness slits its own throat is that all the black interviewees are, as they were back in the Eighties, inseparable from the socio-political "situation". The Rasta only becomes an interesting character after it's established that he's a political player. The woman only seems to feature because she has received something as the result of a political decision, that is, her house (read ANC again).

In other words, they have no reality or personality beyond politics or, more precisely, the film-maker's politics. This is patronising, if not downright racist, for all its supposed good intentions to the contrary. The white people, oddly enough, are characters with personal traits in spite of the political set-up. With respect to a very dedicated film-maker, this is not a documentary about a road but a highly dubious political tract posing as a documentary about a road. For example, to tell a success story about a black inhabitant on this road would seem to defeat the object of the exercise, which seems to be about getting local and foreign money to reiterate hoary old perceptions that belong to a left wing paradigm of the previous century, if not dispensation. Sycophancy is an unfortunate word that springs to mind.

"Main Reef Road" finally becomes completely unstuck in the title sequence when it emerges that the commissioning editor, Brenda Goldblatt, and the co-writer of this made-for-Europe-and-to-impress-the-local-elite documentary are one and the same person. Back in the bad old days of Christian-Nationalism that was seen as racist nepotism. These days it will earn you the high moral ground and, if you're not careful, a 4 X 4 Mercedes Benz, too.

* I invite you to laugh along at the South African Box Office: Proving that high brow comedy works in any part of the world teen movie, "Dude, Where's My Car?" has gone to the number two spot in its first week of release with one audience member barking "It fucking like works, on like so many different levels dude, it's not just about their car being stolen". However, the beauty queen spoof, "Miss Congeniality", is still at number one and in third, fourth and fifth spots are "The Emperor's New Groove", "What Women Want" and "Traffic." (This makes me go a big rubbery one - DR.SOTHA)

NORTH AFRICA

* Pumki Salaza will write and direct the feature, 'Shasta' about a group of female vigilantes that take to the streets of Alexandria, Egypt to cripple the mob who launder priceless artifacts out of the local museum. One of the vigilantes, Shasta, falls for the kingpin in the mob, and must decide which force if greater, justice or love. The shoot will be entirely shot in Egypt, with big name African actors in the leads.

* Djiop Luky has sold his spec script, 'Luky Break' to 'Flighty Entertainment' in Belgium for six figures. It revolves around Luky's own childhood upbringing in Malawi where he discovered gold in his shanty town, and distributed the wealth to the whole village saving them from certain poverty and death. Before that he went into the town and sold his body so that he could make enough money to buy the villager's food every month. He was known as the local 'Robin Hood'. Luky then moved to Europe where he began to write his memoirs.

* Rigobert Song at your service:

Hello readers. I thought I'd chalk up the archives and bring your attention once again to one of Africa's finest cinematic moments 'Life on Earth'. It's quite extraordinary how poetic and profound this film is. Remember to e-mail me at rigobertsong@hotmail.com with your Africa cine musings. Now onto the review:

LA VIE SUR TERRE (Life on Earth) Directed by Abderrahmane Sissako - Mali, In French and Bambara with English subtitles 61 minutes

"La vie sur terre" is one of the most searching and at the same time poetic meditations on Africa at the beginning of a new millennium to have appeared in any medium. It was conceived as part of 2000 Vue Par, a European television series which invited ten outstanding independent producers to imagine the last day of the present century in their own countries. Sissako's specific challenge therefore was to make a film about the significance of the start of the 21st century for people still struggling to enter the 20th; in other words, to show Africa's simultaneous connection to and isolation from modernity, our so-called Information Age. His solution, the most innovative and critically admired of any of films in the series, was to improvise a "fictional documentary" out of daily life in Sokolo, his father's village in Mali near the southeastern corner of Mauritania. He then overlaid these vignettes with readings from Aimé Césaire, locating them within the poet's critique of the relationship between metaphor and periphery. Behind all of this, he weaves the melancholy tones of the great Malian tenor, Salif Keita.

At the outset, Sissako is mindful of Césaire's stricture: "Do not assume the sterile stance of a spectator/ For a screaming man is not a dancing bear." He brings the same ironic self-awareness to this film that he demonstrated in Rostov-Luanda. Sissako (or his alter ego Draaman) appears everywhere in the film riding through the town's maze of mud brick streets on his bicycle - although he does not seem at all deliberate about where he's going, looping back onto himself. Sissako deliberately avoids imposing a false narrative on the customary life of Sokolo, by constructing his film out of loosely scripted fragments and incomplete story threads. Nothing is neat; life in Sokolo is not "Y2K compliant."

The film's dominant visual motif is leisurely, even somber shots of anonymous people making their way slowly across the boundless savanna or through the dusty streets. Sissako here is reminding us that for much of the world's population "life on earth" is still conducted on foot, by donkey cart or bicycle. Life in Sokolo is a far cry from the 21st century trumpeted in the West where the Information Superhighway moves everything in nanoseconds. This is the terrestrial reality which too often is ignored in virtual reality. Yet, for so remote a place, Sokolo maintains remarkably close ties to the larger world. Everywhere one looks there is a radio, worn almost like a piece of apparel. Letters and remittances from Europe constitute the town's economic life blood. Evidence of global pop culture permeates the town. Yet this communication is very one-sided. Radio France reports on the millennium with its own brand of perky but superficial idealism. The town's "homeboys" idle away the morning listening to the broadcast only moving their chairs to escape the creeping sun. In contrast, the antiquated local radio station, appropriately named Radio Colon, offers alternative coverage, readings from Césaire's Discours sur Colonialism.

Sokolo's desperate attempts to maintain contact with the rest of the world are focused and frustrated at the local post office, the busiest place in town and site of its sole telephone. Symbolically, when Sissako/ Dramaan finally receives a call from Paris, the postmaster must hobble across town on crutches to fetch him. "Reaching people is always a matter of luck," the postmaster comments - but he may also be speaking for the filmmaker about the likelihood of successful cross-cultural communication. In an interview Sissako has said, "More important than the message itself is the act of wanting to communicate." Nana, a beautiful young woman has waited all day to get a call through to her boyfriend Bai in a nearby town. (Sissako "discovered" her character when she accidentally bicycled into a shot and then incorporated her into his improvised script.) Exasperated, she gives up on telecommunications, simply gets on her bike and disappears in the film's final shot into the distance in pursuit of her own destiny. Throughout the film her evasions of the director's mild flirtations could be interpreted as Africa's refusal to abandon an independent course to be part of anybody's story.

In La vie sur terre, Sissako is not simply asking that we remember to include an impoverished, "backward" Africa in our overview of the world at the turn of the 21st century. Nor is he simply lamenting the immense and growing technological inequalities between North and South. He is insisting that Africa has a role of its own to play in the unending work of human transformation. "Europe has fed us lies," Césaire says, "For it is not true that Man's work is done."

Africa's real potential cannot be filmed in the dusty streets of Sokolo, nor will it be prefigured in the avenues of Paris or New York, it can only be discovered in the deepest aspirations of the poet, the filmmaker and the people. Sissako through this film has added Sokolo's voice, however distant and distorted by static, to a continuing conversation about what the 21st century will become. Some quotes that you may find interesting: "A movie of uncommon grace and delicacy ...a compelling lament for a beloved country impoverished by colonialism and stranded in time. " - New York Times "Luminous, poetic, reflective and pointed." - Village Voice "A poignant tale of the conflict between old and new, of men and women reaching out to each other in a changing world." - Sundance Film Festival

AFRICAN AMERICAN

* With the boxoffice success of Fox Searchlight's ensemble comedy "Kingdom Come," two of the film's producers, Edward and Rochelle Bates, have sold to the specialty arm the comedy pitches "Holy War" and "The Butler Did It" for the husband-and-wife team to produce. "Holy" is the story of two pastors competing for their town's parishioners. David Dean Bottrell, who wrote "Kingdom Come," will write the screenplay. "Butler" is a macabre comedy about a slacker who inherits his long-lost uncle's estate, which includes a psychotic butler. Nick Marine ("Whacked") will write the script. Fox Searchlight executive vp production Claudia Lewis will oversee both projects.

* Marlon Brando's reported bout with pneumonia has forced him to pull out of a cameo appearance in Miramax/Dimension's upcoming Scary Movie 2 that was to have earned him $2 million. In a statement, studio spokeswoman Elizabeth Clark said, "Unfortunately, due to his health issues and unavailability, we must now recast his role. We wish Mr. Brando a speedy recovery." (Just stick some other guy in the shadows and get Brando to do a half mumbled voice over, problem solved - DR.SOTHA)

* Michael Clarke Duncan was left speechless after "Planet Of The Apes" producer Richard Zanuck requested he go out in public in full gorilla costume. The bulky 6-foot-5 star, who plays Attar, the silver-back gorilla who's second in command of the Ape armies in the remake, refused to be easily persuaded by the bizarre request, in which he was asked to attend a Los Angeles Lakers game in the attire. He explains, "I told Richard it would cost him exactly $1.5 million -- come up with that and I will be there for you. He just laughed."

* Roger Moore, who portrayed James Bond from 1973 to 1985, has nominated Cuba Gooding Jr. to take over the 007 role if, as expected, Pierce Brosnan decides to bow out of the part. In an interview with the British entertainment Web site Popcorn, Moore said that it was about time there was a black James Bond. Meanwhile British casting agent Debbie McWilliams, who cast The World Is Not Enough, has expressed doubt that Russell Crowe might succeed Brosnan. "I think it will be somebody less well known," McWilliams told ITN news. (Several publications on Tuesday carried reports that a little-known Scottish actor, Gerard Butler, may have the inside track on the Bond role.) McWilliams also expressed dissatisfaction with the casting of Denise Richards as Brosnan's female interest in "The World Is Not Enough". "I wouldn't want to be held responsible for that piece of casting. She wasn't my idea of a nuclear scientist. (Yeah, but she looked good in a tank top - DR.SOTHA) There are lots of reasons why she was cast. Mostly they have to have a girl who they think will appeal to 13-to-18 year-old boys in America and Denise was the girl who was chosen. She's actually a very nice girl, but for my money she wasn't right for that part." (Can I be the first to nominate Spike Lee to direct the first black Bond film, and bring Grace Jones out of retirement while you're at it - DR.SOTHA)

* Sticking with Bond Elizabeth Hurley has turned down a part in the new James Bond movie. Her decision is a wise one -- because so many women's careers have flopped after appearing as a "Bond girl". (Are we forgetting Famke Jansen anyone? - DR.SOTHA) John Glen, who has directed six Bond movies, says, "The term 'Bond Girl' puts a lot of actresses off taking the role because of all the stigma that goes with it. Directors and casting agents look down on them if they've been Bond girls. Some directors I know class it as a kiss-of-death for a career."

* Hannibal star Sir Anthony Hopkins is set to appear in a new horror spoof. The Oscar-winning actor will be in "Black Sheep", which tells the story of a Criminal Intelligence Agency (CIA) veteran (Hopkins) who has to make a top agent out of a fool, played by Chris Rock. The film will be directed by New Yorker Joel Schumacher, who was responsible for the (damaged - DR.SOTHA) Batman movies.

* Hollywood star Wesley Snipes has been admitted to the hospital for burns treatment. The White Men Can't Jump actor is filming the sequel to vampire thriller "Blade" in Prague, in the Czech Republic. Wesley suffered from burns after spending six hours under spotlights on set. He complained that his skin was inflamed and his eyes kept watering.

* Actor Morgan Freeman's rise to fame in Hollywood was almost thwarted by years of alcoholism. The star of "The Shawshank Redemption" says he sank into an alcoholic depression in the early 1970s because he felt that his career had stalled, after years playing the father on the children's TV show The Electric Company. Freeman says, "That job literally drove me to drink -- it was so undemanding. I thought this was all I would ever get. I'd been getting drunk every weekend since I was 18." He explains the turning point came when he woke up in a doorway after a drunken binge and thought to himself, "You're lying facedown drunk. This will never do! I had to take control of myself." The actor then stopped drinking, started going on auditions and finally landed the movie roles that raised his Hollywood stature. His 1980 marriage to second wife Myrna Colley-Lee brought new responsibility when his wife suggested they raise one of his granddaughters Kedina Hines as their own. But Freeman says he has no regrets about his wild past. He admits, "I'm just glad to be alive." (Me too - DR.SOTHA)

* Vivica A. Fox, onscreen in Fox Searchlight's boxoffice success "Kingdom Come," has signed with Writers and Artists Agency for representation. She was formerly repped by WMA. Fox recently starred in Buena Vista's "Double Take." Her feature acting credits include roles in "Soul Food," "Set It Off" and "Independence Day." The actress heads an independent production company, Foxy Brown Prods., and is developing several projects. (That's what I tell the medical financial committee - DR.SOTHA)

There's more to me than just a scalpel and white two collared suit you know. I'm a great doctor, I'd say 5'6, dark complexion, great eyelashes, and an eat your heart out grin.think about it.

DR.SOTHA REVO & OUT