Page 29 - Fujifilm Exposure_48 Tamara Drewe_ok

“ETERNA VIVID 500T WAS ASTOUNDING. THERE’S NO GRAIN AT ALL,
IT HAS FANTASTIC LATITUDE AND THE MOST WONDERFUL VIBRANCY WITH THE COLOURS. I CAN’T PRAISE IT ENOUGH.”
ack in 2006, Sean Bobbitt was Bdeep in the Congo’s dangerous
Northern Kivu province – the traditional ‘heart of darkness’- shooting material for
Gravesend, a filmed installation by Steve McQueen with whom he’d later collaborate on the award winning feature Hunger.
As the crew walked through the jungle he noticed that every village had a football field and that the local population were also regularly huddled round radio sets. The World Cup – being hosted by Germany - was in full cry. “I was really struck how universal the World Cup is,” he recalls in wonderment.
That thought came back to him vividly when, four years later, Bobbitt returned to the continent to shoot a new film, Africa United, the story of three Rwandan children and their bid to achieve their ultimate dream – to take part in the opening ceremony of the 2010 World Cup in Johannesburg last month.
Bobbitt had first been offered the film early last year but, after reading the script, turned it down. When a new script eventually arrived after the project had tried but failed to go ahead, his reaction was quite different second time round. “It was fantastic and really made me cry; same writer [Rhidian Brook] but the ending had been completely changed; the whole thing had been really finessed and simplified.”
Africa United is the debut feature, following a handful of shorts, of Debs Gardner-Paterson, daughter of missionaries, who has grown-up all over the world, and introduces five young actors from Rwanda, Uganda and the UK: Eriya Ndayambaje, Roger Nsengiyumva, Sanyu Joanita Kintu, Sherrie Silver and finally
Yves Dusenge.
A UK/Rwanda/South Africa
co-production, the film was shot across eight weeks recreating the kids’ hazardous 3000 mile journey from Rwanda, through Burundi, the Congo, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe before ending up at Soccer City in South Africa.
Of course, the reality was that with the ever present cross-border dangers in some of those countries, the film itself was actually shot, explains Bobbitt, in just Rwanda, Burundi and, principally, the Rainbow Nation where alone cast and crew travelled thousands of
miles on locations from Durban to the Limpopo River.
Says Bobbitt: “The world tends to see Africa as this large homogenous continent but the reality is that every country has very much its own character. From a cinematographic point of view, it is an enormous, varied and very exciting palette.”
Africa is also, notes Bobbitt “a fantastic continent for catastrophe; when things go wrong they tend to go wrong in a very big way. The weather was one of our major problems. It was just so extreme. For instance, a little bridge we’d built on a set just north of Durban was washed away in one astounding storm which on any other continent would have made the news.
“We were also due to shoot at a fantastic waterfall but because of the heavy rain it was in flood so we had to jiggle the schedule around in order to go back later when, unfortunately, it wasn’t as good as we had hoped because the water wasn’t as low as we wanted.”
The extremes of African weather weren’t really the brief for the film which was, says Bobbitt, aiming for a more sunny quality. “In the event, we had to cope with a lot of overcast skies in between. One morning’s shooting was perhaps the worst I have ever encountered in filming when it went from t34 to t2.8 – from almost eye-hurtingly bright to very very dark – seven times in the space of three hours. Trying to shoot an extended dialogue scene became very difficult indeed.
No such reservations, though, about the Fujfilm stocks. Bobbitt used mainly ETERNA Vivid 160T as well as the ETERNA Vivid 500T for studio and night-time shooting.
‘I’d used the Vivid 160T before and thought it’d be perfect as we were not trying to portray Africa as a dour, threatening place but somewhere that’s vibrant and colourful. It was, however, the first time I’d used the Vivid 500T and it was simply astounding. There’s no grain at all, it has fantastic latitude and the most wonderful vibrancy with the colours. I can’t praise it enough.”
One of the shoot’s highlights was filming aboard the renowned MV Liemba on Lake Tanganyika, a passenger ferry which plies its trade between Zambia, Tanzania and Burundi.
The vessel was, of course, once known as the German battleship Graf von Gotzen, which was eventually scuttled on the lake during World War One before being salvaged years later and turned into its present, busy incarnation. Film buffs may also recall that the Gotzen was the inspiration for the German gunboat Luisa of book/movie The African Queen fame.
The Africa United production chartered the Liemba for a day but shooting in the hold proved impractical so the space was recreated for three days of shooting at a studio in Johannesburg. “It was great to be part of living history,” Bobbitt enthuses.
As well as utilising lookalike locations for several of the film’s various country locations, some careful improvising also had to be done when it came to filming the opening ceremony itself set for mid June.
The actual schedule was through February and March, says Bobbitt during which time they reccied Soccer City but since it was still under construction in that period, scenes had to be filmed in another stadium venue – Johannesburg’s venerable rugby union cathedral Ellis Park. Eventually, the production slipped into Soccer City, not for the actual Ceremony itself but a rehearsal instead.
Bobbitt, who expects to work again soon with his Hunger director Steve McQueen – “he’s got three scripts one of which he hopes to film next year” – is clearly thrilled by his latest excursion into Africa, a continent he loves.
“This film is unique. Most films about Africa tend to be based around conflict and while this doesn’t shy away from all the problems that are currently being faced in terms of poverty, AIDS and, yes, conflict, it does it in a way that’s very natural, seeing Africa through the eyes of children on an amazing three thousand mile journey.” QUENTIN FALK
Africa United, to be released in the UK on October 22, was originated on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA Vivid 160T 8543 and ETERNA Vivid 500T 8547
FUJIFILM MOTION PICTURE • THE MAGAZINE • EXPOSURE • 27