The Butterfly Team seems to have grown all of a sudden. Visual artist Bryony Purvis having completed her Masters at the Michaelis School of Fine Art is working alongside Butterfly films on an exciting ‘making of’ project. South African composer, Neo Muyanga, is putting together an opera to be performed in May this year. The Flower of Shembe tells the story of a child, half angel half human, called Addis who must free the people she watches over from a greedy and powerful King. The cast has been in rehearsals for over a month now, and things are getting increasingly interesting with only 1 week to go!

Two dancers warm up during a rehearsal of the Flower of Shembe

Another new addition is our wonderful intern Tobi Goecke who has joined us from Germany.  He has been assisting Bryony on the Flower of Shembe, doing some camera work in Franschhoek and has just taken on his first solo project for the fantastic NGO BEEP (Beyond Expectations Environmental Project) which he is currently busy editing.    Here we see him just after a filming session with the Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu – Butterfly Films were delighted to be granted an interview with the Arch who, according to his media representatives, turns down 99.9% of interview requests!  What an honor.

Our intern Tobi with Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu

Meanwhile Felix and Anna have been busy in post-production on their latest film which was shot in the beautiful Buzi River basin in Mozambique with the assistance of the wonderful Lesley Odendaal.  The film, commissioned by GIZ, is about a community flood prevention initiative and so, obviously, the shoot took place in the rainy season and required lots of running around with no shoes on, knee-deep in mud and trips up hippo- infested rivers in the dark.  All in a day’s work.  You can see the film here.

Felix filming in the Buzi river, Mozambique.

Butterfly Film’s long-term documentary project based in the Wine Valley of Franschhoek is still in production with post-production now in sight. We spent a beautiful day last week filming the harvest of the grapes.  Tomorrow we will go without our cameras, to celebrate the harvest festival!

Anna filming the harvest in Franschhoek

Finally, we were very happy to have a truly lovely write up in Screen Africa last month that made us smile. You can read what they had to say about Butterfly films by clicking here.

Happy New Year!

After a lovely camping break in the Cederberg Mountains we are back at the relatively new Butterfly Films offices and are raring to go.  It looks like next up is a trip to the Buzi river in Mozambique to make a film for the German development organization, GIZ.   We will be following the local community’s training in disaster risk management as they live in an area that is greatly effected by dangerous floods during the rainy season, which, by the way, is when we are going…

A photo from Felix's last trip to Mozambique

At the end of last year we completed our latest Kenya project for Siemens which tells the story of Madam Elizabeth, a modern-day Super Woman who runs an orphanage in a very isolated rural community.  Our film tells the story of her battle to provide clean drinking water for the 92 children that she cares for.  During the dry season, people in their  community are forced to drink from dirty, polluted puddles at the side of the road when all other sources dry up.  It was a humbling and also shocking experience to experience this myself, to feel incredible thirst and not be able to turn on a tap. To watch this film which is called ‘Waiting for Water’, please click here.  We were also chuffed that the last film that we made in this series, ‘Into the light‘, was selected to show at the Wavescape Film festival!

My muddy feet after a days' shooting

We also completed another film for a fantastic local NGO called Masicorps who are doing some important work in the township of Masiphumelele which is near Simon’s Town.  The women who take us through the film are truly inspiring, from a young student to a fashion designer, assistant librarian to a creche worker – their determination to empower themselves comes across in the film.  To watch the film which is called ‘Uliabli’ (this is our story)  please click here.   To learn more about Masicorps, please visit www.masicorp.org

Nontseko works in a Creche in Masiphemelele

So that’s it for now. time to start planning for Mozambique! – here’s to another year of adventure and exploration!

We are now settled in our new office. We really love it, the only issue being that it is so empty right now that it is very echoey. If you drop a pencil, everyone knows about it. And forget about making a phone call. Hopefully when we get back at the end of September, some more lovely creative people will have joined us to share the space and absorb some sound waves.

Tomorrow we leave for Western Kenya to find a story to tell around water purification. We have a week to find the story and two villages that are 6 hours away from one another to research. One of them is a village where there is a large children’s home and the other is a very isolated, rural settlement called Tinga Dam near Lake Victoria.  I look forward to sharing the story of this adventure on our return in early October. Strange to think that, if all goes well, we will come back with a film, a film that right now, we know virtually nothing about.

On our last trip we lived on a Dhow

Today we deliver the film that we made for a small up and coming company called Energy Partners who reduce the amount of energy consumption of large businesses so that the ice caps don’t melt (and they save money into the bargain).  We made a little documentary piece about their company, interviewing the people that make Energy Partners what it is – a energetic, efficient and enlightened company.  Whilst editing the film, the offices of Butterfly films were resounding with the raucous laughter of our intern Isabelle who was working on the footage.

Arno shares his Super Hero identity

We have also just finished shooting a lovely story piece for a fantastic NGO called Masicorps that works in the township near Fishhoek called Masiphumelele. We met a fantastic group of people who have benefitted from the work of Masicorps – it was truly encouraging and inspiring.  We also enjoyed the presence of a new intern, Masande Siziba, who was eagerly assisting Felix with the camerawork and soaking up techniques like a sponge!  A favorite moment of ours was when Felix was busy setting up a difficult shot in the library and a tiny little girl tugged his elbow and asked him to please stop what he was doing and urgently find her a Lion – she needed one for her homework. The shoot stopped and Felix, Anna and Masande set to work trying to find out the life expectancy of a Lion. Apparently 15-20 years if you didn’t already know.

Veronica Rules the library built with the support of Masicorps

It’s all go here at Butterfly Films.  We have just finished our film for Siemens about a fifty year old skateboarder from Durban called Bruce.  You can watch the film here.
So far we have had fantastic feedback; nearly 60,000 views on youtube, a great article in the Sunday Times and I think you can feel, through watching the film how much fun we had working with Bruce and his skater boys.

Felix Seuffert shooting in the skate park, Durban Promenade.

In the meantime we had a trip to the Franschhoek to film the Khoe-San King, Khoebaha Cornelius, a rather controversial character, perform a cleansing ceremony on Solms Delta farm. This involved slaughtering sheep and conversations with the ancestors.  This footage will feature in my upcoming documentary, ‘Eating the Elephant’ which is a portrait of the famous wine valley and some of the characters who live there.  During the ceremony, one character was required to dip his hands in the blood of a slaughtered lamb and then wash away the sins of his forefathers in a bowl of water.  I’m not quite sure what he made of it all but he seemed to be as fascinated by the proceedings as we were. It was a very strange and beautiful evening, most of it lit by either fire or moonlight so I am looking forward to editing the footage into something beautiful.

Praying in the kraal

I have recently been editing Felix Seuffert’s first solo film, ‘Facets – Stories from the Diamond Land’. What an amazing and bizarre world he stumbled into when he first entered the town of Port Nolloth.  Please watch the trailer here to get a taste. We will hopefully have the final product ready to show you next month once we have worked with Composer Shane Cooper on the original soundtrack.

Diving for diamonds

And finally, some great news….Butterfly Films is moving into its new offices on Rose Street this month. We will be sharing the space with a group of documentary filmmakers and the like and we hope that a collaborative creative community will be born – watch this space!

Last week I was set the task of showing a new filmmaker how to make a small news piece. The timing was incredible as it happened to be on the very week that a shocking piece of news came my way. The offices of IkamvaYouth, a fantastic NGOs for whom we made a 20 minute film last year, was burnt to the ground leaving them with nothing. Ikamva’s offices are within a municipal building in the township, right next to the library, and it has been speculated that the fire was caused by a group of people who were protesting about poor service delivery. So sad that they targeted the very people who are providing an excellent service to young people in the townships.

The filmmaker, Bonny Astor, did a great job – look out world, another One-Woman-Band-Filmmaker is coming our way! To see Bonny’s film which took her just two days to complete, and to support IkamvaYouth as they try to rebuild the heart of their organization, please click here.

In the Meantime, we were approached by a major international client and asked to pitch on a job which meant going to stay in Durban in order to find a story. I must say that I really loved discovering this city, especially as I was able to visit it from a different angle to most tourists. When you are looking for a story, for characters, you take in so much more detail. You stop to talk to the boys who make sand sculptures and the rickshaw pullers who inherited their trade from their great grandfathers.

One evening I was taking a break from my hunt on the beautiful Promenade. I stopped at the skate park and there I met Bruce, a 50 yr old man who had a great story to tell about how his childhood passion for skateboarding was reignited when he lost his business. It was Bruce’s story that I eventually pitched to the client who awarded Butterfly Films the job.

Bruce at the skatepark

As the shoot involved a lot of cycling and skate boarding, we had a lot of fun finding ways to capture Bruce in motion. Felix Seuffert and Jimmy Reynolds our two cameramen were to be found filming from bicycles, skateboards, underneath skaters as they did flips above them, from rooftops, the back of trucks using various new inventions such as go-pro-on a broomstick modeled below by Jimmy…. the circus never ended and I was glad to get home in one piece.

Jimmy with the latest edition of the broomstick-go-pro

Felix rides bike pulling Jimmy on skateboard as he shoot's the bike's shadow...

And so now we are in the final stages of completing Bruce’s story and look forward to sharing it with you soon.

We finished last year with a bang – working on an educational Xhosa language film for the NGO Kuyasa that helps struggling communities to improve their living conditions. We met some fantastic characters along the way and really enjoyed the experience of working with the Xhosa language. You can watch the final film here.

We have spent the beginning of this year editing the short film that we shot in Kenya for the Sailing Doctors, an NGO that takes medical aid to a group of isolated communities living in the archipelago of Lamu near the Somali boarder.   Below is a photo of the state that I was after living on a Dhow for a week. I am delighted to say that it is now finished and that you can watch the film here.

At the beginning of January, Butterfly Films was also proud to host the world-renowned photojournalist Gary Knight – one of the founders of VII Photo Agency – during his workshop in Cape Town.  It was a really successful collaboration, Gary is a fantastic teacher – so keen to share his passions and skills – we hope to work with him again some time soon.

In the meantime we have been commissioned by the Baxter Theatre and Neo Muyanga to film his beautiful show, ‘Memory of how it feels’ which is a powerful visual and audio feast.  I took multitasking to a new level as I am also performing in the show – a true honor!

And finally, this year Butterfly Films has been commissioned to produce its first feature-length documentary based in the valley of Franschhoek.  We intend to follow a story that centers around the huge and unsustainable dichotomy between the super rich and the poor in this unusual valley.  We start research in April.

Our film for Young in Prison is finally complete after having to wait a long time to film in Pollsmoor Prison.   Last night we attended the launch of the film which was a beautiful event at 6 Spin Street – an incredible venue that boasts a life-size installation of Desmond Tutu enthusiastically swinging from a large crystal chandelier.
We sadly missed the film’s cinematographer, Felix Seuffert, who is currently in Europe, but he would have been proud of the event.

The film’s main contributor, Nana watching herself in the film.

The event was extremely well-attended – as you can see we had to stand at the back.  We were greatly encouraged by the positive response to the film and by the number of people who decided to take action as a result of the event.  Potential volunteers, donors, collaborators and marathon-runners were coming at us from all directions which makes every moment of work that we put into the film worth it.

You can watch the film here: http://butterflyfilms.co.za/?page_id=109

To learn more about Young in Prison please visit www.younginprison.org

This weekend Butterfly Films is off to Johannesburg to attend the National Film and Video Foundation’s documentary Script-writing course which we won at the Encounter’s Film Festival for our film Reflections for the Big Issue.  A really exciting opportunity that we are extremely grateful for.  Thank you everyone for your support and positive comments on the film.

Meanwhile, I have been living in Franschhoek on Solms-Delta Wine Farm, making a film that explores their heart-felt mission to face up to the the issues of the past and move forwards as one healthy farming community.  By the end of my time there, I was totally convinced that this is a truly unique community that really is outstanding when it comes to taking their social responsibilities seriously and to heart.

You can watch the short  film that I made for Solms-Delta here

In the meantime, we finally got access to film in Pollsmoor Prison for our film for Young in Prison.  An experience that I found deeply moving.  To be face to face with the fact that we have young boys and girls in prison, locked up in their cells for hours and hours on end, with nothing to do but tattoo each other, is quite something.  As I watched one of the boys, Leo, work on his papier-mache camel during one of the Young in Prison art workshops, taking such care to glue each scrap of precious paper in the right place, so delighted and relieved to be given the opportunity to engage in any kind of activity, I felt very strongly that if we really want to prevent crime, if we want to stop children re-offending on release, then we must support organizations like Young in prison, who do so much to encourage young people to take a better path in life and to not give up on themselves.

I hope to share this film with you in the next few weeks.

This week I have been filming in a township community called Lower Crossroads with a girl called Nana.  At 23 years old, Nana is the single mother of  two young children – two beautiful boys – and  they live with her mother, her grandmother (below), her two sisters and her uncle.

Nana wants a career more than anything else. Given her circumstances, this wish does not, on the surface, seem that accessible.   Nana has been in prison a few times.  She was arrested around 5 times in total.  She told me of her life of crime as if in a daze. Growing up in a neighbourhood where your  options a so limited and your role models so compromised, where drugs are omnipresent and school often so uninspiring, it is not surprising that youth in Lower Crossroads get involved in crime.  Even with all this in mind, I still find it hard to digest when this beautiful girl looks me directly in the eyes and tells me that the first time she got caught breaking into a stranger’s home was when she was 15 years old.  The policeman opened the wardrobe where she was hiding and put his gun straight into her face, ready to shoot her dead.  She says that she was lucky he realized she was a girl.

What I admire so much about Nana is her honestly.  This may sound ironic perhaps but it shines through almost defiantly.  She considers my questions very seriously before giving me answers that are often unexpected.  She wants to make it clear that poverty was not the only factor that lead her to commit crimes.  She was bored.  She points out that prison wasn’t that bad, she made some good friends and she could watch television whenever she wanted.  The law, in her eyes, was soft on her. Despite the fact that prison clearly wasn’t able to put Nana off crime, something else was.  The organization Young In Prison visited her and her fellow young offenders in Pollsmore Prison and persuaded them that there was another path to take.  To see Nana now, they must be so proud.  She is a such a determined, positive go-getter.  Her understanding of the importance of  her new path is absolute.

Wow we’ve been busy. Do you like our new website?  Thanks very much to Toby2shoes and Greenbox designs for their amazing work!

Butterfly Films is currently in production on a short educational film for The Kuyasa Fund.  The Fund helps families in the township community living in very small RDP homes to extend their homes by providing them with loans.  Unlike most financial institutions, they engage with people at the bottom of the financial pyramid, people who don’t have formal employment and would therefore not be eligible for traditional bank loans despite the fact that their informal employment means that they are fully capable of repaying a loan.   We’re talking about the vast majority of South Africans here, true entrepreneurs. The owners of Spaza shops, tailors, hairdressers, meat & vegetable vendors, crèche owners, pensioners…

Creche owner, Nosandile who gave us a business tip or two…

Its amazing that large institutions haven’t engaged more with this sector and we hope that this will change once people see that Kuyasa’s model is sustainable.   Butterfly Films hopes to help this process by making a film that will encourage Kuyasa clients to reflect on the importance of managing and saving their money carefully.

Mama Josephine tells us about when her home was flooded because a mouse made a hole in the wall….

This is the first film we’ve made that is made specifically for a Xhosa audience and is in the Xhosa language.  We have to continually remind ourselves that although the cow’s head in a shopping trolley is truly fascinating for our regular audience, it really isn’t an outstanding cutaway for an audience who see this everyday.

family portrait

We have been lucky to have found a highly capable production assistant Nomonde.  She lives just outside Khayelitsha and has had some film training with another filmmaker.  To have her onboard interviewing our contributors and helping in the edit with translations has been extremely reassuring to say the least.  She is a real go-getter.  The quality of children’s Creche in her area is not to her satisfaction so, next year she plans to open one of her own.  We wish her the best of luck!