productions >U-Carmen eKhayelitsha

R/T:  120 mins / Cert: 12A Consumer Advice: Contains moderate language / Release date:  21st April 2006

Starring: PAULINE MALEFANE,
ANDRIES MBALI, ANDILE TSHONI & ANDISWA KEDAMA

MUSIC DIRECTOR & CONDUCTOR CHARLES HAZLEWOOD

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U-CARMEN eKHAYELITSHA is a feature film sung and spoken in Xhosa, one of South Africa’s eleven official languages.  Based on Bizet’s opera CARMEN, U-CARMEN eKHAYELITSHA was shot in April/May 2004 in the township of Khayelitsha, near Cape Town, home to half a million people.  The story of Carmen has over the years inspired a diversity of interpretations in film and theatre all over the world.  Director Mark Dornford-May's adaptation is an impressive and entertaining film that relocates this tale of the love affair between Carmen and Don José in Khayelitsha, a shantytown in South Africa against the backdrop of the hardship suffered by those who live in it.  Framed within an atmospherical environment of gangsters and shebeens this interpretation is a celebration of South African dramatic art at its best.

U-CARMEN eKHAYELITSHA had its South African premiere in Khayelitsha in March 2005 in the very same building in which the last scene of the film is shot.  Marking a significant change in the usual distribution, a month long roll out in the same venue followed, with audiences of 1500 people per day coming to see the film, and an extra screening time per day added in the last week.

U-CARMEN eKHAYELITSHA won the Golden Bear for Best Film at the 2005 Berlin International Film Festival.  The Khayelitsha born opera singer Pauline Malefane is superb in the title role of the sensuous and independent cigarette seller supported by an excellent cast from the acclaimed South African lyric theatre company Dimpho Di Kopane.

More information

• About the film
• About DDK
• About the crew

www.u-carmen.co.za