{"id":9364,"date":"2013-08-05T12:46:43","date_gmt":"2013-08-05T19:46:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/?p=9364"},"modified":"2013-08-05T12:46:43","modified_gmt":"2013-08-05T19:46:43","slug":"noah-and-the-flood-come-to-a-south-african-township","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2013\/08\/noah-and-the-flood-come-to-a-south-african-township.html","title":{"rendered":"Noah and the Flood come to a South African township"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>Darren Aronofsky isn\u2019t the only filmmaker tackling the story of Noah and the Flood right now. Mark Dornford-May, a British-born South African filmmaker who has already directed feature-length adaptations of opera (U-Carmen eKhayelitsha<\/a><\/i>, 2005) and the Bible (Son of Man<\/a><\/i>, 2006), recently finished making a short film about the Flood that is both biblical and operatic in origin.<\/p>\n

The film in question is called Unogumbe<\/i>, and it is based on Benjamin Britten\u2019s opera Noye\u2019s Fludde<\/i> \u2014 which, itself, was based on a 15th-century mystery play<\/a> that was, itself, based on the biblical story of Noah.<\/p>\n

Screen Daily<\/a> first mentioned the film three months ago, and reported that Pauline Malefane, who played Carmen and the Virgin Mary in the previous films, will play Mrs Noah in the new film. They also reported that this is the first film produced by the Isango Ensemble \u2014 a theatre company founded by Dornford-May and Malefane \u2014 that wasn\u2019t developed as a stage production first.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t find any information about Unogumbe<\/i> at the Isango Ensemble website<\/a>, but the Internet Movie Database<\/a> \u2014 which is where I discovered the film while doing a bit of research on Dornford-May\u2019s earlier films \u2014 says the film is 33 minutes long and gives the following description of it:<\/p>\n

Unogumbe follows the plot of Benjamin Britten\u2019s Noye\u2019s Fludde opera closely but moves the action from medieval England to present-day South Africa, where the background and poverty of the township is a striking metaphor for man\u2019s inhumanity to man. Sung in Xhosa, with subtitles in medieval English, it is completely re-scored for African instruments. Noye is now a woman and has to deal with a drunken husband, hold her family together as well as build the Ark and collect the animals. The opera is a tale for children; however the threat of global warming and its consequences make the flood seem a closer reality, and maybe a fitting end for man if he continues to display inhumanity and a lack of care for the world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sounds interesting. Here\u2019s hoping the film can find some sort of distribution \u2014 which might be a bit trickier than usual, if it really is<\/i> only half-an-hour long.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, fun trivia note: According to Wikipedia, when Britten\u2019s opera premiered in 1958, the part of Japheth (or Jaffett, as he is called in the musical) was played by the then 16-year-old Michael Crawford, decades before I and others of my generation first noticed him as the star of Disney\u2019s Condorman<\/i> (1981) and the original stage production of Andrew Lloyd Webber\u2019s The Phantom of the Opera<\/i> (1986).<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Dornford-May, director of U-Carmen eKhayelitsha<\/i> and the African Jesus movie Son of Man<\/i>, has now made an adaptation of the Benjamin Britten opera Noye’s Fludde<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1355,1351,1354,55,1353,1356,236,1350,1352],"class_list":["post-9364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-japheth","tag-mark-dornford-may","tag-michael-crawford","tag-noah","tag-noyes-fludde","tag-pauline-malefane","tag-son-of-man-2006","tag-u-carmen-ekhayelitsha","tag-unogumbe"],"yoast_head":"\nNoah and the Flood come to a South African township<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mark Dornford-May, director of U-Carmen eKhayelitsha and the African Jesus movie Son of Man, has now made an adaptation of the Benjamin Britten opera Noye's Fludde.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2013\/08\/noah-and-the-flood-come-to-a-south-african-township.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Noah and the Flood come to a South African township\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mark Dornford-May, director of U-Carmen eKhayelitsha and the African Jesus movie Son of Man, has now made an adaptation of the Benjamin Britten opera Noye's Fludde.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2013\/08\/noah-and-the-flood-come-to-a-south-african-township.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"FilmChat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-08-05T19:46:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/files\/2013\/08\/paulinemalefane-300x210.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter T. 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