Enc2019: Billy Monk - Shot in the Dark + Scenes from a Dry City(Short) + Johannesburg, California(Short)
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The Bioscope is proud to once again host The Encounters Documentary Film Festival in Johannesburg.
BILLY MONK - SHOT IN THE DARK
Dir Craig Cameron-Mackintosh
2019|South Africa|37min
Billy Monk was a photographer and bouncer who worked at the Catacombs nightclub in Cape Town in the late 1960s. Using only archival photographs and beautifully composed contemporary interviews, director Craig Cameron-Mackintosh provides an engaging portrait of Monk, bringing together the key characters of his tragic story. Monk was working at a time when apartheid forbade the mixing of different races and his pictures of love, desire and intimacy across the colour bar exist in stark contrast to the official order put in place by the National Party government. The resulting snapshot of Cape Town nightlife at the time offers a refreshing glimpse into a period of history that is usually rendered in very different images to those of Monk’s secret world of sailors, 'sugar girls', rock 'n roll, and uninhibited joy
SCENES FROM A DRY CITY
Dir Francois Verster & Simon Wood
2018| South Africa|13 minutes
This beautifully crafted film looks at the recent Cape Town water crisis from a host of different perspectives: from illegal car washers to golfers on a lush green fairway. In the process, the film offers rich commentary on the racial inequality and income disparity in South African society.
JOHANNESBURG, CALIFORNIA
2018| South Africa|USA|20 minutes
Dir. Ben Stillerman
Along the Mojave Desert Ben Stillerman finds Johannesburg, California – named after the South African city. The documentary is a poignant view of a nostalgic home far away from home for the homesick filmmaker. While in conversation with the locals about how they came to find themselves there, a sense of familiarity and similarity between the 2 distant cities emerges.
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