DISTRICT 9 - what is Neill Blomkamp up to?

I'm old enough now that I can draw circles around genres which once excited publishers and Hollywood agents, but which were just as quickly discarded. Can you recall for instance, the sinister South African gangsters and rogue Apartheid agents who once populated movies like Lethal Weapon 2 and books like VORTEX, the Larry Bond thriller? The genre exploded in the late 1980s when the Soviet Union collapsed and fiction producers were suddenly desperate to find a viable alternative to the KGB. The nemesis for the 90s had to be a viable stereotype, and one which was hated by a broad demographic. Apartheid-era South Africans were perceived as vile villains who fit the Bill. They were after all sophisticated, cunning, privileged and desperate to survive.

Well sir, our world changed too quickly. In Russia the mafia emerged as the new strongmen and Muslim terrorists were a gift to our pop culture, scarier than the KGB ever was. As for the Republic of South Africa, the A.N.C. regime is already into its third president and a couple of million black kids were born under A.N.C. slogans and promises. Those who didn't like the "new South Africa" simply left, and they now constitute a very tame diaspora in their adoptive countries. That said, a South African born Canadian has just crafted his first feature film, and his unique vision might trigger something akin to a new genre. That would be fun ! Where CHARLIE JADE , the Canadian-funded South African television series failed, perhaps DISTRICT 9 the riskier Science Fiction - allegory may just succeed in stirring imaginations.

In 2005 Neill Blomkamp and friends crafted a six minute short called ALIVE IN JOBURG. The server couldn't keep up with the demand and the film became an Internet phenomenon. Peter Jackson was impressed and invited Blomkamp to try the creative atmosphere in New Zealand.

PART ONE: Original Sin

Neill Blomkamp arrived in Vancouver, B.C. with a South African high school diploma in his hand and a burgeoning talent for computer graphics. It seems he was not born with "original sin" as his family had avoided the taint of active participation in the organs of "White Rule". Neill never could wash the R.S.A. out of his hair, and so after some training here in computer VFX , he secured steady employment and made it a personal priority to return to his native land each summer and discuss creative collaboration with young filmmakers who had stayed behind.

My research into Blomkamp's life shows that he has surprising depth, and that he will not shy from social issues that would crucify less sure men. With his movie DISTRICT 9, Blomkamp is engaging in political allegory every bit as clever and biting as George Orwell pulled off with ANIMAL FARM several decades ago. We are witnessing a creative concept which is unique and possibly significant.

A production still from DISTRICT 9, a low budget Science Fiction - Allegory produced by Director Peter Jackson. The movie goes into general release on August 14. The INDEPENDENCE DAY type Alien spacecraft of Blomkamp's 2005 short, has been replaced by vessels equally sinister looking.

When SONY announced this project back in November of 2007, I was impressed by Blomkamp's tenacity and skill at getting the "Big Boys" to trust his creative judgement. The Fan Blogs are currently busy scraping up every studio dangle or minute clue needed to assemble a prediction of what this movie will look like. Leaked photos show a small outdoor set standing in for the entrance to DISTRICT 9, and confirm that the money was very tight. The Casting was also very low budget.

We were told that Blomkamp co-wrote the DISTRICT 9 script with "his partner" Terri Tatchell. Now that's rather extraordinary. Blomkamp is certainly a wunderkind, but Ms. Tatchell has no S.F. track record whatsoever, except in her relations with Blomkamp. Tatchell attended the Vancouver Film School and in 2001 earned her diploma in Writing for Film, Television & New Media. She got a job at Rainmaker Studio under the late Bob Scarabelli, and was designated Rainmaker's "Industry Relations Co-ordinator". At the same time she joined the Board of the Vancouver chapter of Women in Film and Television. (She served one term as its President but is no longer a member.) This thumbnail photo, which dates to 2003, is still archived on the WIFTV web page: It was at Rainmaker that Terri met Neill, who was then employed in VFX. She has no track record in Science Fiction and probably no cultural knowledge of South Africa beyond what she has picked up through Neill. Terri Tatchell best known creative effort is actually a stage play written for high school students and which is added to the curriculum of some schools because it teaches kids about the legal fight to gain Canadian women the vote. It's called "Woman Idiot Lunatic Criminal" and tells the story of a girl transported back to 1910 to meet her Suffragette great-grandmother.(Her story takes its name from the awkward wording of the Canada Elections Act of 1918.) I'm not trying to pick on the lady but the truth is that while Neill was sequestered for most of last year directing the movie, Tatchell was here in B.C. involved in her own work. I can't believe she added much to the project, but who knows?

In PART TWO of this article I plan to comment on some of the creative aspects of DISTRICT 9.

The Tom Thomson mystery endures

"But the dark pines of your mind dip deeper...
There is something down there and you want it told."
Gwendolyn MacEwen (1972)

In my student days I sampled CANLIT sparingly but I did read widely in Canadian non-fiction. One book which flourishes in my memory is The Tom Thomson Mystery [1970], which was written by retired Toronto judge William T. Little. Eventually I learned to appreciate the genre known as "True Crime", and I guess I have developed a permanent taste for it. Little's book is open on my desk because I just enjoyed watching a 48 minute documentary film entitled DARK PINES. The film, produced in 2005 by B.C. filmmakers, employs actors to stand in for the principles who were Thomson's neighbors and friends in Northern Ontario. Their skills add much to our understanding of the botched 1917 investigation, and render the mystery more accessible to a modern audience.

The skull of Tom Thomson photographed on a spade, with adhering soil and plant roots. Thomson was exhumed in a remote Ontario cemetery in 1956. Note the small hole in his left temple. [Algonquin Park Archives photo]

The film, which finds it metaphor in a Gwendolyn MacEwen poem, is quick to remind us that Tom Thomson was the single most influential Canadian artist in landscape painting. Thomson's stay at Mowat Lodge on Canoe Lake lasted five years, from 1912-1917. It was time enough for him to prepare for the fifty canvases which remain his legacy for the people of Canada. The documentary does not accept the official verdict of "death by drowning". It posits and recreates two plausible scenarios for the artists' death, both of which would be categorized as manslaughter, rather than premeditated murder.

The iconic NORTHERN LIGHTS painted by Tom Thomson. In one sequence the film uses animation - breaking up the elements of two of Thomson's paintings and desaturating the colours. It works very well in helping explain that Thomson was onto something really novel in Canadian art.

DARK PINES is a speculative investigation which employs dramatic recreations. The cast includes William B. Davis, the "Smoking Man" of the old X-FILES series. The DVD is not available in retail stores but can be ordered online.

DARK PINES has an excellent cast, and the studio interviews of historical figures in costume, combine with re-enactments to weave together threads of sometimes conflicting testimony. I have spoken to writer-producer Ric Beairsto (Laughing Mountain Communications) and learned that the approach borrowed from an effective idea used in a BBC series on Charles Dickens, programs which I also enjoyed. Judge Little, whose 1970 book provided source material for DARK PINES, is represented by an actor playing the role of "William T. Little - Investigator". For those with sufficient interest, it is possible to watch a segment of FRONT PAGE CHALLENGE originally broadcast in 1970, in which the expert panel get to discuss Little's findings and his book. The show is in the CBC DIGITAL ARCHIVES - here. ...It's interesting to note that the CBC spent a couple of bucks in 1970 on some actors who made a crude simulation of Thomson taking his fateful canoe trip.