In Contention

Tag: Skin

  • And you thought awards season was over…

    Well, you were right. But for the true completists among you — we do promise awards coverage “this deep,” after all — here’s a suitably obscure nugget to wrap up the 2009 parade.

    The Ivor Novello Awards supposedly honor the finest in British music composition, and while they receive a reasonable amount of press in the UK for their pop music citations, many aren’t aware that they have a film score category too. With that in mind, the nominees for Best Original Film Score are:

    John Powell, “Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs”
    Helene Muddiman, “Skin”
    Ilan Eshkeri, “The Young Victoria”

    Well, now you know. I’d say the nominating committee clearly didn’t see “Moon,” but hell, they saw “Skin.” Curious. Still, any organisation that recognises the songwriting skillz of both Lily Allen and The Duckworth Lewis Method ain’t all bad.

  • Hollywood, Johannesburg

    Sharlto Copley in District 9In January 2005, exactly one week after I left my birth town of Johannesburg to study film in the brighter lights of London, Darrell James Roodt’s earnest AIDS drama “Yesterday” became South Africa’s first Oscar nominee in the Best Foreign Language Film category.

    Only a month later, the rather better “uCarmen eKhayelitsha” took the Golden Bear at the Berlin fest; again, the country’s first production to take top honors at one of the major festivals. And only a year later, Gavid Hood’s “Tsotsi” went one better than “Yesterday” by taking the Oscar.

    By this time, I was beginning to wonder if the movie gods were sending me a sign that I’d picked the wrong country: South Africa’s film industry seemed poised for a crossover explosion. That didn’t quite happen. Hampered by the usual financial constraints of a third-world industry, the country went back to its steady output of provincial lowbrow comedies and not-quite-there dramas, few of them seen beyond its own borders.

    Almost five years later, however, something interesting is starting to bubble there again — but this time, it’s not South Africa’s own industry making waves as much as an international cinematic preoccupation with the country and its stories.

    (more…)

  • 8/19 Web Round-up

    Sophie Okonedo in Skin• “Skin”: An apartheid story no one would screen. [The Independent]

    • Robin Wright Penn files for divorce from husband Sean Penn. [CNN]

    • Noah Forrest picks 10 films you should be excited about this fall. [Movie City News]

    (more…)

  • ‘Skin’ takes the Santa Barbara Audience Award…but where are the buyers?

    SkinOne of the films I caught during the recent Santa Barbara International Film Festival but neglected to mention was Anthony Fabian’s “Skin,” the true-life story of Sandra Laing, a black girl born to white parents in Apartheid era South Africa.

    The film has been bouncing around the festival circuit — Toronto, Rio de Janeiro, AFI — but despite landing buyers in a few foreign markets, American distributors have shied away.

    “Skin” boasts solid performances from Sophie Okonedo and Sam Neill.  It’s quite accessible and is the kind of thing you’d expect a dependent to pick up without blinking.  I wasn’t blown away by the film or anything, but it’s certainly marketable.  So what gives?

    Well Fabian’s film somewhat surprisingly took the Audience Award in Santa Barbara over the weekend, it’s first gong so far.  I expected something like “C’est pas moi, je le jurre!” to win the award, or one of the Asian dazzlers, like “Suspect X,” each of them audience favorites during the fest.  But “Skin” made its stand.

    Maybe those domestic buyers will come calling now.