In this parody of an American travel show profiling the sites and attractions of South Africa, the host makes assorted mistakes and shares erroneous information as he makes his way through–or more accurately, bungles about–the country. There’s one scene for example where he inadvertently brushes his sandwich against ancient cave hieroglyphics. In another scene he butchers the pronunciation of a province repeatedly even after being told twice by a local how to properly say it.
A voiceover intervenes with a call to locals–who know the country–to travel about South Africa, “They’re exploring our country. Why don’t you?” An end tag contains the website address and a toll-free number for Kulula, a low cost airline in South Africa.
“American” is one of three travel show takeoffs–the other two spots centering on ill informed hosts of tourist tip programs in Japan and Sweden. Their common bond is that they are all embarrassingly ignorant of South Africa. All three commercials were directed by Anton Visser of Velocity Films, Cape Town and Johannesburg, for agency King James, Cape Town.
The agency ensemble consisted of executive creative director Alastair King, art director Greg Cameron, creative head/copywriter Paige Nick and producer Sam Kelly.
Prenneven Govender produced for Velocity. The DP was Michael Cleary.
Editor was James Hosking of Left Post Production, Cape Town.
Raoul Peck Resurrects A Once-Forgotten Anti-Apartheid Photographer In “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found”
When the photographer Ernest Cole died in 1990 at the age of 49 from pancreatic cancer at a Manhattan hospital, his death was little noted.
Cole, one of the most important chroniclers of apartheid-era South Africa, was by then mostly forgotten and penniless. Banned by his native country after the publication of his pioneering photography book "House of Bondage," Cole had emigrated in 1966 to the United States. But his life in exile gradually disintegrated into intermittent homelessness. A six-paragraph obituary in The New York Times ran alongside a list of death notices.
But Cole receives a vibrant and stirring resurrection in Raoul Peck's new film "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found," narrated in Cole's own words and voiced by LaKeith Stanfield. The film, which opens in theaters Friday, is laced throughout with Cole's photographs, many of them not before seen publicly.
As he did in his Oscar-nominated James Baldwin documentary "I Am Not Your Negro," the Haitian-born Peck shares screenwriting credit with his subject. "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is drawn from Cole's own writings. In words and images, Peck brings the tragic story of Cole to vivid life, reopening the lens through which Cole so perceptively saw injustice and humanity.
"Film is a political tool for me," Peck said in a recent interview over lunch in Manhattan. "My job is to go to the widest audience possible and try to give them something to help them understand where they are, what they are doing, what role they are playing. It's about my fight today. I don't care about the past."
"Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is a movie layered with meaning that goes beyond Cole's work. It asks questions not just about the societies Cole documented but of how he was treated as an artist,... Read More