Rooidag

A film shot over one summer on the Sandveld.

Watch the trailer

Thursday 4 March, 19:30

Labia Theatre, Orange Street, Cape Town

Marlize Cloete

Marlize Cloete grew up in Leipoldtville and left at eighteen, the way everyone does. Rooidag is her first feature. She spent six years as a script supervisor on other people's sets, wrote this one in the back of a bakkie between call sheets, and shot it in eleven weeks with a crew of nine — six of them from the same district. There is no studio behind it. The NFVF put in the first third, a post house in Salt River deferred its invoice for a year, and about sixty people gave between R200 and R20 000. All sixty are in the end credits.

Stills

Elands Bay, the first morning

Elands Bay, the first morning

Katryn walks the R365 to Graafwater

Katryn walks the R365 to Graafwater

The packhouse, one light and a bounce board

The packhouse, one light and a bounce board

Boetie in the lands after the fire

Boetie in the lands after the fire

Verlorenvlei, four in the afternoon

Verlorenvlei, four in the afternoon

The last scene, shot twice, both times at sunrise

The last scene, shot twice, both times at sunrise

Seats for the Cape Town premiere

Trailer · 1 min 44

Press

Ninety minutes in which almost nothing is explained and everything is understood.

Nadia Fataar · Mail & Guardian

Cloete shoots the Sandveld the way it actually looks at four in the afternoon — flat, white and unbearable.

Pieter Malan · LitNet

There is no score for the first forty minutes. By the time the music arrives you have stopped needing it.

Zanele Dube · Sunday Times

It took one award at Durban. It should have taken the lot.

Hendrik Bosch · Die Burger

Cast and crew

Elmarie Witbooi

Elmarie WitbooiKatryn

Her first film. She read for it in the Clanwilliam library on a Tuesday and had the part by Thursday.

Sipho Ngwenya

Sipho NgwenyaBoetie

Ten years on stage at the Baxter. He learned to drive a tractor for this and has since bought one.

Johan Prinsloo

Johan PrinslooDirector of photography

Shot the whole film on two lenses and turned down a third twice, in writing.

Rehana Davids

Rehana DavidsEditor and sound

Cut it over fourteen months in a flat in Salt River, mostly between ten at night and four.

Then, around the country

Saturday 13 March · The Bioscope, Maboneng, Johannesburg
Thursday 18 March · Suncoast CineCentre, Durban
Saturday 27 March · Ou Meul Theatre, Clanwilliam
Friday 9 April · The Athenaeum, Gqeberha

Seats and enquiries