Its time for ol' Father Geek to shake off the wistful wonderment that has gripped him since seeing his second screening of the simply phantastical motion picture epic that is Peter Jackson's FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, and get on with my real life duties such as posting this weekend's edition of our ever popular Africa-AICN Column featuring filmic ravings of Dr. SOTHA, another thoughtful analysis from Rigobert Song, and of course the delightful inspirations of Head Nurse Hollis. Soooooooo with no further adieu here's our very own renegade jack of all medical trades, especially those self-created, Dr. SOTHA...

Dr. SOTHTA reporting in, and recommending you all go see Gosford Park whenever it opens in your neck of the woods. It’s a sumptuous film with note perfect performances from its unbelievable cast. It’s easily Altman’s best film of the last 15 years, and to miss it would be as bad as me calling Nurse Hollis a slag…because of-course she’s not. Unlike other features in the media I’m not going to bore you with preposterous introductory stories about myself. It’s not my thing. I like to keep this column low-key and real.

Now send me your best DR.SOTHA adventure tales to My Capetown Psycho Labs right away!

Nurse Hollis, I did not know that slag backwards spelt gals…

SOUTH AFRICA

* At long last a local feature heads the South African Box Office: The new Leon Schuster comedy, Mr Bones, has made a whopping R4 754 859 in its first week of release at the South African box office. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone isn't doing too badly either, having earned R8 146 048 in just two weeks. These films are followed by Legally Blonde, The Fast And The Furious and Kiss Of The Dragon.

* A 90-minute documentary co-produced by Kwela Films (Los Angeles) and Bomb (South Africa), Amandla - A Revolution In 4 Part Harmony, has been selected for the Sundance film festival. Directed by Lee Hirsch the doccie was made with the support of SABC 2 as the local broadcaster and an investor in the project. The film celebrates the role of song in the struggle for liberation in South Africa. Local producer Desiree Markgraaff described the project as an eight year labour of love. "We owe a great deal of thanks to SABC 2, HBO (New York), the Ford Foundation and YLE (Finland) who have been staunch supporters." The sound design for the film is being done at Skywalker Sound (George Lucas’s Studios).

* Prolific filmmaker and academic, Ayoka Chenzira is in South Africa this week to shoot scenes for a theatrical adaptation of her feature film script, Flying Over Purgatory. The scenes will be used part of a multi-media performance of the play in April 2002. The shoot features a South African cast and crew. Flying Over Purgatory examines themes of truth, understanding and forgiveness through South African and African-American female characters, against the background of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission. Chenzira, who has run workshops for the M-Net New Directions initiative, is currently raising finance to shoot the feature film next year.

* Just when you thought it was safe to watch TV again now that Big Brother has come to an end, pay-TV broadcaster M-Net has secured the rights to produce a local version of another reality show, Idols. Scheduled to hit South African screens in March 2002, Idols involves a nationwide search for South Africa's next solo superstar. Based on the phenomenally successful UK version called Pop Idols, South Africa is only the second country to run its own talent search on this scale. The first half of the Idols series covers the audition process, thereafter the public gets to vote who stays in the running to win a recording contract. Pearson Television's, Herman Binge is executive producer.

* The STEPS For The Future project (a series of 35 films about th HIV / AIDS crisis in Southern Africa initiated by YLE TV2 Finland and SA producer Don Edkins) has been awarded a special "red ribbon" citation at the final award ceremony of the International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA) in Amsterdam. The IDFA Jury Rapport said: "We would like to honour the STEPS For The Future Project as embodied by Brian Tilley's French / South African film, ‘It's My Life’, and honour as well as the work and lives of Zackie Achmat and HIV / AIDS activists in Southern Africa. We really want to celebrate the fact that the STEPS project is a unique, global and precedent-setting collective enterprise among many, many broadcasters, Foundations and Independent Filmmakers, both North and South."

* The FILM RESOURCE UNIT (FRU), in association with North-West Cultural Calabash will be showcasing the best of South African and African film productions at this years' edition of the North-West Cultural Calabash in Mafikeng. The Calabash African Film Festival will be launched on Wednesday 12th December 2001 - with a hard-hitting short film "The Little Girl Who Sold The Sun" produced by one of Africa's finest filmmaker, the late Djibril Diop Mambety (Senegal), the Calabash African Film Festival will commence from 14th to 17th December 2001. Whilst the world celebrates a century of cinema, millions of South Africans are still without access to the over 500 films produced by Africans over eighty-five years of film development on the continent. This despite the increased appetite of South Africans for locally produced film and documentary materials. The place to see many of the great South African films (Mapantsula,! The Line, The Foreigner, Chikin Bizniz, Fools etc.) is in the capitals and TV stations of Western Europe. Rightful consumers of these important film works - 'South Africans', are continually denied access. Making South African produced film and documentaries accessible to ordinary South Africans must be a key driver of any strategy to grow the local film industry. The soon to be launched Calabash African Film Festival is a critical intervention to this all-important challenge. Through FRU's many audience development projects, rural and township communities now have access to African cinema. FRU's ground-breaking initiatives include: Mobile Video Education Project (MVEP) - this project visits South Africa's remotest rural areas for the screening and exhibition of African films; Community Screening Project - targets peri-urban and urban areas for the screening and work-shopping of film; Video Distribution Operators (VDO) - a flagship project of European Union's CWCI (Conferen! ce, Workshop and Cultural Initiative Fund) the projects aims to identify and train young unemployed film enthusiasts to become self-sufficient film distributors, African Film Club - sponsored by the MTN Art Institute this recently launched project targets tertiary institutions and high schools for the introduction of visual literacy courses for students.

NORTH AFRICA

* Please hold your applause until after you’ve read Rigobert Song’s review:

Hello Readers. It’s a pity I didn’t get to see ‘Patient Abuse’ before December 1st (National AIDS Day) because it would have made an apt and topical appearance. Even so the film sheds light on the alarming crisis facing South Africa, and indeed Africa, in its battles to fight HIV-Aids which is infecting masses by the day. Remember to email me at rigobertsong@hotmail.com with your African film thoughts.

Patient Abuse

South Africa's Struggle for AIDS Treatment

– Produced & Directed by Jack Lewis -- South Africa

With one in five South Africans infected with the AIDS virus and one in four pregnant South African women HIV+, the AIDS epidemic is having a devastating impact on the new South Africa. Archbishop Desmond Tutu has labeled the crisis, “the new apartheid”. This new activist documentary introduces audiences to the Treatment Action Campaign, South Africa’s inspiring grassroots AIDS organization, leading the fight against the greed of international pharmaceutical companies and the inaction of the South African government.

The end of apartheid and the historic inauguration of President Nelson Mandela in 1994 brought on euphoria, but in the background, AIDS was developing into a national emergency. The film presents the early missteps by government health officials, which included bankrolling the extravagant musical theater production Sarafina 2 from limited AIDS education funds and giving credence to the claim that the industrial solvent Virodene was a “cure” for AIDS. Now 160 infants are born with HIV each day, which could be avoided by making AZT available through public health clinics to all HIV+ pregnant mothers. The government refuses, claiming that the medication is ineffective and toxic. The documentary follows the controversial statements made by current President Thabo Mbeki which advance doubts that HIV is the cause of AIDS.

Even though the infection rate is growing, AIDS still carries a social stigma. So much so that activist Gugu Dlamini was stoned to death in 1998 for revealing her HIV+ status. A part of the ability to build a movement on behalf of people with HIV is acknowledging and honoring them; the documentary covers memorials for activists such as Simon Tseko Nkoli and Christopher Moraka and presentations by Supreme Court Justice Edwin Cameron.

Just as significant as confronting the South African government on its AIDS policies is the Treatment Action Campaign’s work challenging pharmaceutical companies for charging high prices for AIDS drugs which make them unaffordable for the world’s poorer people and governments. In fact, the title Patient Abuse is a play on words referring to how pharmaceutical companies guard “patents” to prevent governments from producing cheaper generic drugs. The Treatment Action Campaign was successful in getting the companies to drop their suit against the South African government for wanting to explore producing affordable drugs – a rare victory for the world’s poor over multinational corporations.

The documentary highlights the efforts of Zackie Achmat, the dynamic chairperson of the Treatment Action Campaign. Achmat is a former anti-apartheid activist and gay rights campaigner who is HIV+ but has vowed to refuse anti-retroviral medications until they are available to all through public health clinics. The Treatment Action Campaign embodies the spirit of the anti-apartheid movement by uniting community activists, trade unionists and church groups.

AFRICAN AMERICAN

* ALI star Will Smith ploughed millions of dollars of his own money into the film after Sony film bosses failed to put up the cash. Actor and director Michael Mann joined Smith in reportedly guaranteeing a total of $20 million to ensure the movie reached its full potential. Mann says, "The movie was going to cost more than (Sony executives) wanted to spend. Ali was only made because Will and I put up our fees and became co-financiers and the completion guarantors of the picture." Mann also concedes the bio-pic of boxing legend Muhammad Ali’s budget ran "north" of it's predicted $105 million. (Hardly the stuff of Coppola though – DR.SOTHA)

* Boxing boss Don King is walking around with five bullets lodged in his head. The amazing discovery was made after the promoter paid a visit to hospital for a scan after banging his head during a flight from Los Angeles to Las Vegas for Lennox Lewis’s world title fight with Hasim Rachman last month. Spokesman Alan Hopper says, "The next day Don had a stiff neck and, as a precaution, decided to get it checked out at hospital. "They did a CAT scan and found he had five shotgun pellets embedded in his head. The doctor said he was lucky to be alive." The controversial promoter was involved in running a notorious 'numbers' illegal gangster-organized lottery in the late 1950s. His spokesman says the pellets became embedded after "something that happened in 1959", but refuses to elaborate. (Somebody make a feature about this guy, and I’m not talking about the Ving Rames effort either – DR.SOTHA)

* Although Don Cheadle received no screen for the billboard and newspaper ads for Ocean’s Eleven he has participated in all of the major publicity events involving the film with those stars, including a Barbara Walter’s TV special, the Wall Street Journal observed today. (And rightly so, Cheadle is one of the best actors of his generation – DR.SOTHA)

* Producers of a new movie starring the controversial rap singer Eminem have found themselves battling local residents of the run-down Highland Park area near Detroit, particularly over a plan to burn down a derelict building for one scene. The French news agency Agence France Presse on Tuesday quoted one local councilman as saying, "I don't see any entertainment value in watching homes being burned. ... It wouldn't reflect well on our city." Residents of a local mobile-home park also complained about how it had been literally trashed for a scene in the film. One man remarked, "We pick up the trash and they bring it back in. Does that make sense?" A resident of the park told AFP: "They are making us out to be a bunch of rednecks in trailer parks. ... We've got enough problems around here with crime. We don't need this." (Curtis Hanson ! watch out – there’s nothing worse than a bunch of rednecks who don’t think they’re rednecks – DR.SOTHA)

* Bad boy rapper Eminem’s big screen debut movie has finally been given a title - "8 Mile". The semi-autobiographical film had been working under the title of The Untitled Detroit Project but now it seems to finally have a moniker, referring to a road in the Michigan city which separates black and white communities. Meanwhile the film's producer Brian Grazer has laughed off reports of a romance between Marshal Mathers III and co-star Kim Basinger. Grazer says, "They're not having an affair. They're so not, actually. If they were, I would go, 'I don't know.' But they're actually not." (what the hell is Grazer talking about? – DR.SOTHA)

DR.SOTHA REVO & OUT