Index

1.  The Cover Page
2.  Trailers
3.  Logline
4.  Short Synopsis
5.  Long Synopsis
6.  Long Synopsis (cont'd)
7.  Press Coverage
8.  Biographies
9.  Premiere
10.  Director's Statement
11. Anecdotes
12. Target Audience
13. Technical Information
14. Registration Certificate
15. Links
16. Contact Information

View Trailer 1: (3 minutes)

View Trailer 2: (2 minutes)

View Trailer 3: (1 minute)

View Trailer 4: (30 seconds)

Living in the oldest desert in the world, the OvaHimba face extinction, unless their ageing chief can raise his grandson to become their next leader and save the tribe.

The OvaHimba of the Namib Desert are descendants of the Ancient Egyptians from the era of Queen Nefertiti, and was once the richest nomadic tribe in Africa. Now, however, they find themselves on the brink of extinction. Trapped in the 1904 Herero-Nama war, they settled in the godforsaken wastes of Kaokoland after fleeing genocide at the hands of the German army and marauding Nama gangs. Having grown weary of the name 'OvaHimba', which means 'beggars', reigning Chief Nguzu believes their only hope for survival lies in the hands of his grandson, Omusuverua [the protagonist].

A Fire in Africa is the story of Omusuverua Muharukua, a member of the OvaHimba tribe of Kaokoland in northern Namibia. His grandfather, Chief Nguzu, is the first to notice a smouldering fire within the young Omusu, and decides to send him to school, where he learns English, grows in faith and, at a nearby army camp, comes into contact with the mystical art of karate.

Chief Nguzu has a clear strategy to assure the tribe's future. He envisages Omusu as the next leader of the OvaHimba - a leader who will save their tribe from extinction. Having failed to fulfil the role of redeemer himself, Chief Nguzu has suffered from guilt throughout his life. His peace-loving tribe had fled into the Namib nearly a century before, after suffering constant attacks by marauding Nama gangs in southern Angola. Now struggling to survive in a barren wasteland, Nguzu hopes that Omusu will lead his people to become the proud and prosperous tribe they once were. (continued....)

(continued...)

Omusu is forced into confrontation with the customs of his tribe when his best friend is killed by an evil man named Omurue [the antagonist]. Omusu questions the fairness of the tribe's traditional judicial system, and is subsequently banished from his village. Alone, but determined, he sets off on a journey across the desert to the capital, Windhoek, where he attains a black belt in karate from a leading martial arts school. His natural talent and exceptionally fast reflexes soon earns him the opportunity of a lifetime − to join the Kaokoland karate team in a tournament against the current world champions, the USA.

After the tournament, he travels back to his tribe to reclaim his fiancée and new-born child from the claws of his arch-enemy, Omurue. Upon defeating him in combat, Omusu is hailed as a hero and welcomed back into the tribe. Here, his aspiration will be put to the test in the years after he succeeds his grandfather as the new chief of the OvaHimba tribe.

link to:

MC SPEECH AT THE PREMIERE

When the film was first released in South Africa in 1989, with limited screenings in township cinemas, on SABC Channels 2 and 3 and at the Weekly Mail Film Festival, it received wide coverage in various newspapers. The Pretoria News led an article with the heading 'A Big Hit on Black Circuit', which drew on the fact that the film had grossed more than seven times its budget. Discussions on A Fire in Africa were included in two published books, namely Beelde van Suid-Afrika: 'n Alternatiewe Rolprentoplewering by Martin Botha and Adri van Aswegen and Movies, Moguls, Mavericks: South African Cinema 1979-1991 by Johan Blignaut and Martin Botha, which proved the hypothesis that low-budget independently produced movies can be profitable when the artistic treatment is successful.

In this film, Japan Mthembu made his first appearance in a feature film in the leading role. He has since gone on to appear in A Far Off Place (1993), Snake Island (2002) and the Oscar-nominated Invictus (2009), directed by Clint Eastwood. In the film, which tells the true story of how President Nelson Mandela inspired the Springboks to win the 1995 Rugby World Cup, Japan plays the role of a local cop.

The role of Orlog, a karate instructor at an army camp during the South-African/Angolan Border War of 1966-1990 is played by well-known actor Rod Alexander. With past roles in films like Kaptein Caprivi (1972), Snip en Rissiepit (1973) and Aanslag op Kariba (1973), Rod has received a total of 14 credits for feature films, with French Toast being the most recent in 2015.

An interesting aspect of the casting is the first cameo appearance of the now world-famous actor and martial arts expert Billy Blanks. In 1987 Blanks was part of the USA Karate Team depicted in the international karate championship scenes of A Fire in Africa. A seven-time karate world champion, he went on to play the leading role in many high-budget US feature films. Blanks acted in more than 50 movies starring with world-famous actors like Bruce Willis and Jean-Claude van Damme.

A Fire in Africa was the first feature-film script of writer Emil Kolbe. He went on to write several screenplays for film and TV, including the script for American Kickboxer. This former newspaper sub-editor currently lives in Sydney, Australia where he writes novels under the pen name Neil Colby,and his works include Kidnap, published by Amazon.com.

Gerhard Uys who directed the film, lectured at, and ultimately headed up the Film School at the Pretoria Technikon. After establishing Nickelodeon Films in 1983, Gerhard focused on editing feature films, some of which were distributed in Germany, Spain, Korea, the USA, France and England. He also became the first filmmaker in South Africa to obtain a doctorate in Motion Picture Production.

 

Three versions of A Fire in Africa currently exist - the original film, the restored academic version and the restored director's cut. The academic version premiered on 24 November 2017 at Ster-Kinekor Cinema Nouveau in Rosebank Mall, Johannesburg. After the screening, which formed part of the acclaimed film school AFDA's annual film awards evening, two film lecturers, Laura van der Merwe and Mark Buyskes, started working on the director's cut, as the 'sneak preview' had revealed to them how the final version could be improved even more.

The original idea for the film emanated from a discussion about the truthfulness of claiming that something is 'the best in the world'. The first Rugby World Cup was held in 1987, the year in which A Fire in Africa was conceived. A striking omission from the tournament was the formidable Springboks, whose exclusion was the result of an international sports boycott. Around this time, Emil Kolbe and myself debated the ethics of calling an event a 'world tournament' when the Boks were not even allowed to compete. New Zealand's All Blacks won that World Cup, ostensibly making them the 'best in the world', and yet they were defeated by the Springboks the first time the Boks were allowed to participate. This feat gave validity to our debate around the meaning of the word 'best'.

The search for an isolated tribe to illuminate this philosophical conundrum led us to the OvaHimba people, and research on the community paved the way for the development of a screenplay. But the narrative strangely took on a life of its own during filming as the reality of the OvaHimba culture impacted upon us. The under-the-skin story now evolved into a clash of cultures - the ancient OvaHimba culture and tradition vs. the modern world. The protagonist struggles to reconcile the two, and his mind is in conflict about it. The outcome is that he eventually embraces both cultures and grows stronger as a result. In a sense, he grows to become his own man and creates his own unique blend of the two.

A telling irony revealed by the backstory of A Fire in Africa is that the peace-loving nature of the OvaHimba is precisely what brought about the injustice inflicted upon them. This intriguing contradiction, along with the enigma around the meaning of the word 'best', led to the production of A Fire in Africa, with the tagline: 'An aspiration born in a lost civilisation'.
 

This project started off in 1987 with a limited budget. Only filmmakers who have attempted to produce a film under similar circumstances will truly understand the phrase: 'Everything is against you'. Despite these limitations, and possibly through some ethereal intervention, A Fire in Africa has developed into a movie that is a force to be reckoned with, and a substantial amount of money has since been invested in restoring and re-visioning the film.

A Fire in Africa is unique on a number of levels, depicting the injustices and hardships suffered by the OvaHimba through its narrative of 'life as a journey'. The film is mostly fictional, but some aspects of it are rooted in fact. Certain scenes, for example the slaughter of the ox and the prediction of the tribe's future in its intestines, were not staged, but filmed as they actually took place. For more details on the story behind the story, a media release can be viewed on www.afireinafrica.com.

When viewed in the context of limited-budget movies, the original version of A Fire in Africa is truly remarkable, since it was distributed in cinemas and sold to two TV channels. It was not only the first feature film produced on a topic never captured in a dramatic film before, it also had arguably the lowest budget ever for a feature film shot on location in a foreign country.
 

With its initial release in 1989, the film was aimed at black high-school pupils around 14 years of age. With the restoration of the film and the intention of distributing it via the Internet however, the target audience required restructuring. The new version is aimed at an audience that comprises more mature viewers aged around 24 years and ideally based in Europe, the UK and Scandinavian countries. The narrative focus now serves an audience with a higher LSM (Living Standards Measurement) and addresses a more sophisticated philosophical need. Finally, on a cultural level, the lives of the contemporary target audience contrast sharply with those of the OvaHimba, who have managed to survive in circumstances that may be perceived as, and in fact are, truly remarkable.

Picture Format: HD Digital
Audio Format: Stereo
Total Running Time: 90 minutes
Colour/Black-and-White: Colour
Aspect Ratio: 16 x 9
Cameras: Arri BL & Arri Alexa
Editing Suite: AVID & iMac Pro
Colourising: DAVINCI RESOLVE 15

A dedicated website has been created for the film and can be accessed at www.afireinafrica.com.


Information about Nickelodeon is available on www.nickelodeonfilms.com.

e-mail: uys@nickelodeonfilms.com

Etienne Marais, Web Developer. info@zabra,co,za