| Now Showing: > Sonsverduistering > Unbroken Spirit > Bafo Bafo Forthcoming Attractions |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
:: Moving Pictures
Since creating Rogue Productions, Michael and Linda Cross have premiered
the documentary “Bafo Bafo - What Kind!?”,
about maskanda maestro Madala Kunene and self-confessed "Afro-Saxon"
Syd Kitchen. They have had a short film, “Unbroken Spirit”
selected for the 2004 ILL Academy Extreme Sports Film Festival, have completed
several music videos including their nominated-work with The Buckfever
Underground and have completed their first screenplay,
“An Empty Place”.
Michael Cross has directed a number of documentaries including
“Will Smith in Africa” and edited and co-produced the
documentary “Nkosi: A Voice of Africa’s
AIDS Orphans” as a tribute to the late Nkosi Johnson. In
addition to directing, he has extensive editing experience, having worked
as consulting editor on “Mr.Bones”,
South Africa’s most successful film of all time, and contributed
to the editing of the feature films: - “The
Long Run”, “Happy Now”
and “I Capture the Castle”. He
has also produced music videos for Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Hugh Masekela,
Scooters Union, Syd Kitchen and Underground Press.
"Sonsverduistering" - The Buckfever
Underground
Directed by: Linda and Michael Cross
We made two music videos for the Buckfever Underground - “Sonsverduistering” and “Oom Willem”, which was nominated as the Best Music Video of the Year. For “Oom Willem”, Linda had worked out a shot list and the filming was all over in about two hours flat. Linda directed, my parents’ home was the location and my dad played the boozy title-character.
At the Geraas Music Awards, the “glittering televised ceremony”, we lost, and they pretty much awarded themselves the Perspex tube for a video they made! Anyway, “Sonsverduistering” is a selection of images from Toast (the band’s lyricist and a truly gifted writer and photographer) who supplied several hundred. Linda selected a hundred or so and sequenced them, and I cut it.
"Sonsverduistering" remains my favourite.
"The Buckfever Underground is een van daardie groepe wat groot plesier aan sy aanhangers verskaf, want die groep word met elke nuwe album net beter. Na die werklik uitstekende Survival is Personal is Teaching Afrikaans as a Foreign Language (TAFL) selfs ’n nog sterker album... As daar enige hoop is vir die toekoms van Afrikaanse musiek, lê dit in wat vandag op die alternatiewe snykant van die popkultuur gebeur. En hierin gee The Buckfever Underground se laaste twee CD’s die toon aan."
Theunis Engelbrecht - Litnet
“TeachingAfrikaansasaForeignLanguage is ‘n bedonerde stukkie post-modernistiese protes: anargisties, nihilisties, silloos, vol alledaagse sleur en geanker in die weirdste beelde dankbaar...ronde nulle is hulle nie. Hulle skop vierkant vas. Esteties kan jy hulle verbykyk, maar bewonder moet jy hulle”
Paul Boekkooi – Rapport
“The Buckfever Underground se musiek is doelbewus onafgepoets, eerlik, met skerpsnydende lirieke. Dit verg aandag van jou intellektuele sy. Dit weier om net nog 'n plek op 'n speellys in te neem…Die feit bly egter staan dat daar is niks om die eentonigheid van 'n middelklas-bestaan te breek soos 'n cd van The Buckfever Underground nie."
Quintus van Rensburg – www.roekeloos.co.za
“Unbroken Spirit” – ILL Academy Entry
Directed by: Michael Cross
ILL ACADEMY is the annual South African Skate,
Surf and Extreme Sports Film Festival, when film-makers from around South
Africa are invited to submit work. “Unbroken Spirit” aims
to capture the essence of all extreme sports – the courage to come
back from inevitable injury and to get back up, as it were, and do it
again!
> back to top
 |
 |
ROGUE PRODUCTIONS presents:
SYD KITCHEN and MADALA KUNENE in “BAFO BAFO – WHAT KIND!?”
Designed and Co-edited by: BRODE VOSLOO
Music recorded by: NUX SCHWARTZ
Filmed by: MICHAEL CROSS, BORIS VON SCHONENBECK, BRODE VOSLOO
Researched and Co-directed by: LINDA CROSS
Produced, Edited and Directed by: MICHAEL CROSS
“The quintessential musical partnership for a new South Africa.” – Mail & Guardian.
Born a few years and a few miles apart in the middle of last century, Mzwakhe "Madala" Kunene, South Africa's king of the Zulu blues guitar, and Stanley “Syd” Kitchen, one of the great undiscovered jewels of South African music, found each other after fifty years.
Together they are Bafo Bafo.
“There was this big river of separation between us. I used to say: ‘The time will come for us to be together’. Around the early 90’s this big river became narrower. Around ’94 it dried up completely. We met face to face. We said, ‘Hey, how are you? Do you see now that this is the real thing?’” – Madala Kunene
Though they practically lived on one anothers’ doorsteps, the lives of Madala Kunene and Syd Kitchen were divided by the political chasm which scarred the cultural landscape of South Africa for so long. However, through their kindred musical spirit, Kunene and Kitchen were destined to meet and forge a bond of unprecedented personal and artistic strength.
Kunene's sublime interpretation of maskanda, the haunting traditional music of KwaZulu-Natal, is beautifully complemented by Kitchen's idiosyncratic hybrid of jive, folk, rock, bluegrass, boereorkes, cajun and country to create a whole far greater than the sum of its singular parts.
“My musicality comes from jazz and blues… I’m very interested in Afrikaans music, in cajun music, in any music, so I bring a few of those influences. Madala’s bluesey and jazzy as well but he’s got all these great West African influences plus ‘Madala-line’, his own unique version of maskanda. The music we make together is like nothing else that has come before. I call it ‘Afro Saxon’ music. It’s a nice mix-up of his roots and my roots to create new roots.” – Syd Kitchen
Bafo Bafo – “What Kind?!” documents the beginning of a remarkable journey into uncharted musical waters. And, as befits great voyages of discovery, the heroes are intrepid adventurers in search of shining new horizons: Kitchen and Kunene are poets, minstrels, performers and pals whose unique vision for themselves, their music and their country is one filled with joy, wonder, courage, tenacity and triumph.
> back to top
FORTHCOMING ATTRACTIONS
“Manje”
– Bafo Bafo
“Aalwyne, Aasvoels and Aalwurms”
– Blomkrag
“Falling Domino”
– Scooters Union
"Zimpi Zombango”
– Bafo Bafo
“Braveheart”
– Scooters Union
“Where You Are”
– Amakool
“Souled Out”
– Underground Press
"Oom Willem Strikes Back"
– Buckfever Underground
“Out of Time”
– The Little Heavies