The Wooden Camera

Description

Two thirteen year old boys play along the railway line in Kayelitsha, a township close to Capetown. A dead man is tossed from a passing train, clutching an attach case. Inside, the boys discover a gun and a video camera. Sipho takes the gun, Madiba takes the camera. Madiba hides the camera within a makeshift wooden box to avoid losing his new toy. Through the lens, his everyday surroundings take on a strange new beauty. Sipho becomes a gang leader, operating out of Capetown, accompanied by Madiba who is more interested in filming luxurious city life than crime. Madiba films a young white girl, Estelle, stealing a book from a bookstore, which she gives him as she leaves.

Customer Reviews:

choose the camera.......2007-01-25

In the first few minutes of this South African film two young teenage friends discover a dead body with a huge pistol and a video camera. The shy introvert Madiba chooses the camera, while cocky Sipho takes the gun. The film explores the consequences of those choices. Madiba hides the VCR in a home-made wooden camera, enabling him to shoot everyone and anything on the sly. He experiments with the aesthetic, technical and voyeuristic aspects of film-making. Refracting light with different lenses, candles, floating plastic bags, and even the bubbles of a drink awaken his artistic bent. His cinematic creations form a significant portion of the film. "Some day," he hopes, "my pictures will hang in houses." Sipho's gun awakens in him foolish bravado, and we watch him descend to petty crime, drugs, gangs and finally horrible tragedy. Between them both is an improbable, budding romance between Madiba and a rebellious white girl, Estelle, from a wealthy family with racist secrets of their own. This film is good, not great, but well worth watching for its themes of adolescence, choices, fate, friendship, and racism in a post-apartheid township of Cape Town.

A tale of friendship and more.......2005-10-21

Wooden Box is a tale of friendship between children of different South African social classes. It's reminicent of a Brazilian slum movie, but with aspects of the ills of society (racism) A good unknown cast of young actors helps the movie.

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