Word: hollywooders
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...location with skilled, cheap crews. Movie makers found that South Africa's diverse landscape - savannah to desert, winelands to white-sand beaches - could stand in for almost anywhere, while the people of the Rainbow Nation, with a carefully placed sombrero here or a hijab there, could be almost anyone. Hollywood descended. In the last few years, South Africa has doubled as 16th century England, Iraq, Mexico, the earth in 10,000 B.C. and outer space - as well as other parts of Africa. As a result, Cape Town now finds itself home to a thriving film industry that employs...
...Hollywood found a great backdrop for its movies, it also fell in love with South Africa's stories. The end of apartheid narrative in particular - an epic of racist repression that climaxes in a transcendent moment of redemption under an iconic leader - is a movie script made real. And Hollywood has shot that script over and over again. In 2004, Samuel L. Jackson and Juliette Binoche made In My Country about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in the mid- to late '90s, and Hilary Swank starred as an attorney representing a black South African political activist seeking amnesty...
...Hollywood's obsession with South Africa hasn't carried over into the box office. Many of the U.S. films of the past few years have struggled to get a release. Those that have, flopped. Why? "Audiences like authenticity - something that's real and from the heart," says producer Raleigh. The truth is that no country is ever as simple as black and white, let alone one with South Africa's unrivalled ethnic mix and bloody history. When Tsotsi won its best foreign film Oscar in 2006, the cast and crew went to Mandela's house for a celebration. "After...
South Africa's filmmakers are taking that advice to heart. They still crew and act for Hollywood, but the country now churns out a steady roll of its own excellent small films. The year before Tsotsi won its Oscar, South Africa missed out on one for Yesterday, the story of an HIV-infected mother bringing up her daughter in dirt-poor KwaZulu Natal. In 2007 came Bunny Chow, a hip black-and-white comedy about three comedians traveling to a festival that recalled early Spike Lee. Last year featured Jerusalema, a sophisticated thriller about the rise and fall...
...director Gavin Hood would have left for Los Angeles. Charlize Theron, South Africa's biggest star, never even acted at home. But Nkosi, who was cast in Peter Jackson's upcoming alien blockbuster District 9, shot in Soweto last year, says that while he's happy to act for Hollywood, he has no wish to act in it. South Africa is too exciting. "We were shut away from the world and each other for so long. But now we are getting to know each other. Now we are telling our own stories," he says. "This is not just about making...