Tsotsi and the South African Film Industry
March 11th, 2006 by Andre Soares
In "Hour of the Thug," Emma Brockes discusses the impact the Academy Award-winning social drama Tsotsi has been having in South African cinema. A brief quote (via The Guardian):
"There are certain headaches you get from making a film in South Africa that you just don’t get in other parts of the world. When Gavin Hood sat down to write Tsotsi, the much-lauded story of a Johannesburg hoodlum, he faced, as well as the usual problems of pacing and narrative, the following issues: white people in the movie, yes or no? If yes, should they be old white people (ie apartheid-era) or young white people (post-apartheid)? Could he cast a Zulu as the bad guy, when the good guy was Tswana? What about Sothos in the audience - would they feel left out? Hood speaks Afrikaans, English and bad Zulu. His lead actors speak Sotho, Tswana and Zulu. The film was made in "tsotsi-taal", a street language amalgam of all five. It was not an easy shoot."
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