"When you listen to the sea, it sounds like it's
crying. There's a lot of love in the water."
There's also a lot of love in Sea Point
Days, Francois Verster’s affectionate analysis of a post-card perfect
seaside enclave in Cape Town,
South Africa. The
film had its world premiere at TIFF on Saturday afternoon, nary two weeks after
its first finished print rolled out, as Verster informed a crowded house at AMC
before the screening.
Formerly an all-white suburb, Sea Point now plays host to
people of all ages, races, classes and ideologies. With its casual collection
of eclectic eccentrics, complete with a homeless man who casts himself in the
role of philosophizing fool, the film brings to mind Fellini’s portraits of
seaside life and the inherent surrealism that the tides seem to pull out of
people.
An emphatic white evangelist preaching his own skewed gospel
on street corners shares equal space with a young black man who brags about his
clothing brands and mistakes the iconic Che Guevera image on his T-Shirt for
Bob Marley. One person optimistically exclaims that “Black and white is one
thing now – we live together,” while another declares in frustration “We’re
supposed to unite, to be one. We’re not one.”
The articulate Verster capped the proceedings by offering
additionally insights into his incisively structured and skillfully observed
film, which you can see Tuesday at 8:30pm at AMC 9, or Friday September 12 at
5:30 at Varsity 7. Pictured above: director Francois Verster (centre) with producers Lucinda Englehart and Neil Brandt
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