News and reviews

May 2022

October 2020

The documentary I directed about the the sinking of the SS Mendi, TROOPSHIP TRAGEDY, can now reach a global audience as it is available for viewing and purchase on Amazon prime.

https://www.amazon.com/Troopship-Tragedy-Sinking-SS-Mendi/dp/B088W7MWD3

March 13, 2020

This weekend CNN International’s Inside Africa will be showing a story I produced on street art in South Africa, facilitated by the not-for-profit company Baz-Art. It shows how one company is helping to unlock the extraordinary talent of many young artists, in public spaces, beautifying abandoned walls and creating splashes of colour and meaning in neglected streets. It was an inspiring story to make, and it took the crew from Salt River to Mitchell’s Plain and Khayelitsha in Cape Town to Maboneng in Johannesburg.

ARTIST in RESIDENCE at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advance Study (STIAS)

1 March 2020

Since January this year I have been utilizing resources and an office at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) next to a park, on the edge of the Stellenbosch University campus. I have a position here as an Artist -in-Residence until June 2020, to enable research on a project which I hope will grow into a documentary.  STIAS feeds my body and my mind – it provides a tasty lunch every day, and gives me access to the University of Stellenbosch library, as well as wifi, phones and technical support. I have peace and quiet in my office; it’s a beautiful space to think and write. People are kind and there are no immediate deadlines.

 I am here with a number of STIAS Fellows from around the world. Most of them are leading academics from a range of disciplines. We are encouraged to discuss our projects and their themes, formally and informally.  I am finding the interaction stimulating and it is changing the way I will make my documentary. This is their website: https://stias.ac.za/

 After I made a presentation about the challenges I have in projecting the truth in historical documentary-making, one of the fellows commented that documentary-making sounded incredibly lonely. I have had to reflect on that and in retrospect, that has been true for me.  While there is always the comfort of a production crew in the field, the research and direction of my documentaries was a journey I made largely on my own. The intellectual companionship at STIAS is an immense contrast to that.

I am hoping that the work I do here at STIAS  culminates in a documentary about an important man who lived and died  at a critical time in South Africa’s history. And in that story, there is a robbery, a murder, an inquest and some big political questions. Until I am further down the line in the reserach, I am reluctant to reveal more details. Watch this space.

I most probably will return to freelance work in the next half of the year, but this half of 2020 is providing a useful break from field production and an opportunity to pursue a project which has been deferred for too long.  

My work in the news.

More of my documentary films broadcast on DSTV History Channel this year

April 2, 2019

Much to my delight, more of my Sabido Productions work has been broadcast on the DSTV History Channel this year. First to be shown was a film about the inspirational anti-apartheid Veteran Denis Goldberg - Sentenced with Mandela. Then in March 2019, my favourite documentary, The Vula Connection, created with an award-winning team, was broadcast. The main character of that documentary, Tim Jenkin, has told me that his dramatic escape from Pretoria Central in the 1980’s has been turned into a film. And that there is interest in making a TV series about the Vula story. It will be an interesting space to watch….

Troopship Tragedy to be broadcast on DSTV History Channel

I am very excited that my documentary, Troopship Tragedy - The Story of the Sinking of the SS Mendi, is to be broadcast on Saturday 10 November 2018 on the History Channel, channel 199 on DSTV at 16h20 and 23h00.

Weekend Argus feature about Troopship Tragedy and the sinking of the SS Mendi

15 October 2016

Michael Morris interviewed me this week for the Weekend Argus about the making of Troopship Tragedy. 

STIAS Fellowship at the University of Stellenbosch as an Artist in Residence, January - June 2020

For the first half of this year, I was fortunate to be an Artist-in-Residence at STIAS, the Stellenbosch Institute for Advance Studies. I was able to access this opportunity through my documentary project on the death of Soweto businessman, Jabu Vilakazi. Not only did I have access to the Stellenbosch University Library for valuable reading about South Africa, specifically Soweto, in the early 1970’s, but I was also given creative space in the form of a beautiful office, overlooking a well-tended garden. Its intimate solitude was thrilling.

But the most extraordinary part of STIAS was the regular meeting of minds. Conditional to the acceptance of the position there, was the commitment to sharing lunch with the other Fellows working at the Institute, sharing board and conversation across a range of disciplines. Many of us have felt it was a transformative experience. The exchange of ideas and perspectives will shape me for years to come.

The majority of the Fellows were academics, working on in-depth projects in their fields. We attended seminars once or twice a week where each of us had a turn to present a talk on our own speciality. This was a fairly daunting challenge, as I am not used to presenting to a roomful of academics. (As a journalist and a producer, I don’t see my audience, not even after broadcast!) I presented a paper entitled The Trouble with Truth - Stories that emerge from the History of Events and the Memory of Emotion. It was about the dynamic tension between the story-teller’s view and the factual record as I experience it as a documentary-maker.

Unfortunately, the Fellowship was suspended by the Corona lockdown half-way through my allotted time. Most of the international Fellows took repatriation flights home. Those left behind had only two final weeks in the office - sans dejeuner - and then it was all over.

So I will always remember that disruption and how it upset our particular group in our stride, the international Fellows dispatched to all four corners of the world, the locals idling in Stellenbosch without access to what had become so valuable. It was deeply frustrating.

I made sure the last remaining members of my cohort drank some champagne on our final day in front of the fire. It was a wet and windy afternoon outside and a warm way to tie up loose ends conversationally before I carried my personal effects to the car. I was melancholic all weekend. Now I sit back at home, with some still unpacked boxes at my feet, thinking of the way forward. I have thrown myself back into commercial work but have a shelf of library books still to process. As a gesture to what I have learnt, I am going to replace the faded old table cloth I am using to block the light from the window in front of my desk. I have splashed out on fancy blind so that I can create my own STIAS-type aesthetic at home, feeling now more intensely the benefit of a creative space.

On a more cerebral note, I hope to keep talking to the Fellows I met and admired so much, even if only through email and zoom. Thank you to STIAS for having me, and to the Fellows for their inspiration.