Tarania Naidoo, a second-year film degree student won the Billy Preston Emerging Creative Talent award at the Bokeh fashion film festival, which took place on September 22. She won for her film What would Sarah do?
The festival aims to bring together creatives from fashion, film and other related creative industries.
Naidoo and Siwe Mlotywa, a fashion student at CPUT, entered the competition to win funding for the film and won. Bokeh asked entrants to present a treatment, which consists of the script, colour palette, crew and actors.
“It was a long process, we would go for meetings with them constantly, we spoke to them about our concept, we had table reads,” said Naidoo. What would Sarah Do? is about a girl that finds a popular girl (Sarah) annoying and seems to dislike her, however she actually wants to be like her. “It’s something that a lot of people do, especially in Cape Town, and we pretend we hate all these people, and we do, but it’s all jealousy.”
She wanted to create something completely relatable. Naidoo also believes in representation and chose women of colour to act in her film.
Each set had a different colour, “the kitchen was completely yellow, the bedroom was white and orange, the living room had a retro theme, the bathroom was very clean, with a lot of plants,” said Naidoo. The popular girls were dressed in reds and whites, and the lead wore gold and yellow.
The key crew members were, Tarania Naidoo (director/script writer), Siwe Mlotywa (art director), Bryan Augustyn (editor), Xola Makoba (set designer/make up), Katlego Dikeledi (hair), Sarah Hugo Hamman (stylist), Liam Solo (cinematographer) and more.
“I was extremely shocked, I really didn’t expect it, I just stood there super shocked and then it clicked to me that we needed to go on stage,” said Mlotywa, when their names were announced as the winners.
The two walked away with R50 000, that they’re going to split with the crew.
By Gabi Adriaanse
City Scribes 