FILM NEWS
South African Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
Title: Proteus
Director: John Greyson & Jack Lewis
Specs: Canada / South Africa 2003 video 100min
Proteus was shot on Robben Island, at the Castle of Good Hope and at other locations in the Cape.
Based on a court record found in the Cape archives, dated Thursday 18th August 1735, it tells the story that led to the imprisonment of Dutchman Rijkhaart Jacobz (Neil Sandilands) and Khoi Claas Blank (Rouxnet Brown) for “mutually perpetrated sodomy”. The plot also involves Virgil Niven, a Scottish botanist, who was working in the Cape at that time, naming and cultivating the South African protea species. Niven ran a prison garden on Robben Island.
The film is a curious and inventive mix, employing anachronisms to comment on the past (distant and recent) and present, our hidden past, and is very clever on the issue of language – who speaks and writes, who has a voice and who has the right to name and describe flowers, people and crimes…
Proteus had its World Premiere at Toronto in 2003 and has just screened at the Berlinale.
It will be distributed on video and DVD by Stargate / OIA. Visit our Video Store page to order your copy.
Berlin film fest focuses on South Africa
Out In Africa
Jhb Sat 13 / 7.30pm Mon 15 / 8.15pm Wed 17 / 6pm
CT Sat 20 / 7.30pm Mon 22 / 6pm Sun 28 / 8.15pm
Dbn Sat 3 / 8.15pm
All festival films
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