Old-School Boer Western Short Film. Say What?

A murderous zealot roams the Transvaal plains and cuts down any and every Uitlander with mining interests, but in the pale grass of his homeland, something slithers.

Slange Vang is my latest film project and will be my last attempt to create a film that will bite the face off The Open Window School of Visual Communication's Film Department and leave it squirming in the wake of this Idea that I've been festering.

It all started in December 2010 on a journey from my hometown of Pretoria to the Great Eastern Cape Province. South Africans will know that this journey is characterized by miles of pure, vast, wide-open NOTHING. I stared at this amazing void for about 8 hours when it hit me like a fresh Lambert's Bay Snoek: This is more 'Western' than I have ever seen. Immediately my mind raced to conjure up all the great Western films I've seen and I realized that the South African frontier is the best place to film a proper Western film.

Now, many people will start thinking: What? You wanna make a cowboy movie in Afrikaans, with a bunch of Dutchman Clutchplates? My answer is yes and no. Yes I want to make an Afrikaans Western film and no, Westerns are not cowboy films. Western films are about the dichotomy or tensions that arise when modernizing technology intrude and jeopardize a people's rural, subsistence way of life. Some embrace it because there is good money to be made out of this and others fight their dearest ass off to maintain their way of life and all that goes with it. Now, a quick look at the history and development of the Republic of South Africa will tell you that this was the Wilder West, with some real life examples of what Western films are really about. There are plenty of remarkable books on the intricate workings of how the RSA came to be, especially the newer works of Max Du Preez, and this formed the foundation of my research for the creation of this film.

And so the idea for Slange Vang was born, and with plenty hours of research, talkin' to old folks and learning how to work leather, it got off to a great start.

Please link this blog to anyone interested in Western films, short films, South African history or just anyone who would enjoy my crap sense of humour.