Listen to the interview in streaming audio (requires Apple Quicktime)

Early in the very entertaining feature film STANDER, in limited release this weekend, the film's protagonist, Police Captain André Stander, reports for duty in a small black South African township. A riot is underway. Stander has been called to riot duty in order to put down the riot by force if necessary. STANDER director Bronwen Hughes joined me by telephone and talked about shooting such a huge scene.

"The riot scene was so daunting in so many ways." Hughes said. "Productionwise it was enormous and we treated it like a film within a film and had production meetings just about that one scene that's how big it was. Creatively, it was incredibly important if we didn't feel for Andre Stander in that moment I don't think that people would care what he did for the rest of the two hours of the film at all. Myself personally I had the enormous responsibility to get it right because I'm working with South Africans, I'm everyday looking into the eyes of people who lived it and it only ended 8 years before. Every single one of them had a first hand account, a personal story they would tell me and offer up and everyone of them felt very passionate about how this scene must go. Of course it was up to me to distill it into one dramatic sequence which is way too much weight for one scene to bear as a matter of fact."

Hughes continued.

"We went to the heart of it in Tembisa, the township where the real Andre Stander was on duty. And we had one thousand three hundred people in the scene on the biggest shoot day, and besides that when people heard the Toyi-Toyi chant go up, those songs that are known by every black South Africans, the swell of emotion that goes with those songs is so unbelievable that they would come from miles around. And so productionwise we had the challenge of keeping people out of the frame who weren't wearing 1970s wardrobe who all wanted to join in. In fact, in the helicopter shot there's all kinds of people in the wrong wardrobe but luckily they are far away but they are running from miles around to join in these protest songs. It is that much a part of their culture and history."

"Had you been exposed to any of this prior to reading the script?" I asked.

"You know, I thought I knew a lot about South Africa because I read and I take an interest in the news and I thought I was equipped to, you know, draw some conclusions about life under Apartheid. But when I got to South Africa it was all just upended. I had no idea. In fact, I didn't really know about the importance of the Toyi-Toyi."

STANDER is blessed with an impressive soundtrack that thumps and pumps from the point go where the shot is from above a large modern South African city. Lots of big impressive steel and glass buildings feed well on the energy of the score. Hughes told me about selecting the music.

"The music for the film has no direct line of logic." Hughes said. "People would hear that we were making a film about Africa so they would send us African music to consider. But black African music would have been the last thing in the world that white people in Africa at that time would be listening to probably.

"So that didn't fit," Hughes continued, "and then it's a 70s film so people would send us pop songs but not all that made it to South Africa, not to mention that that is expensive for an indie film. So, none of those things were working for us and we went on gut instinct. The editor and I, we worked on music from the first moment of trying to put the film together and as part of the original thinking and direction for the film. We have always been attracted to the discs of David Holmes and the Free Association because they are very cinematic. He [Holmes] works by melding soundscapes and atmospheres and recorded street sounds in with his own music in with obscure 70s vinyl samples. So, this combination of things somehow felt like the right spirit when we put it against picture. Luckily, David Holmes agreed to score the film for us because we used his old music as temp. And that was a real coup because he wasn't really interested being such a busy touring musician and DJ and when he saw tape on the tour bus with the rest of the band they all wanted in."

"Has he scored other films?" I asked. I thought that picking up one of Holmes discs would make good weekend shopping (especially since The Black Eyed Peas Elephunk was getting a little old).

"Yes, he was first brought in to do Soderbergh's OUT OF SIGHT and now he is doing Soderbergh's OCEAN'S TWELVE. So, he is coming over to this side. But he is really an interesting guy. He DJ's all over Europe, they fly him all over Europe every weekend and he plays with the Free Association. He produces for other musicians like Tricky's Montana and other people and his diversity is what appealed to me."

"Now the character of Stander in the film, is he a good man or a bad man, or a selfish man or what?" I asked. "Was it hard for you when making the film to decide whether to commit to Stander as good or bad or to just leave it ambiguous?" Truth is that the film walks a perilous tight rope ultimately not really taking a position as to Stander's genuine nature.

"Yeah, I know, that is really the biggest challenge of the movie." Hughes admitted. "I mean he is an anti-hero really. From the first frame to the last this guy is going to do nothing but bad things and, yet, if the movie is going to succeed at all you have to feel for him. I don't think people will go to a movie or certainly won't like a movie where the lead of the film has no redeeming qualities and there is no sympathy or empathy for him or any of those things. So that is not the film we set out to make. The idea of trying to understand what drove him to do these things, to rob a bank to continue to rob banks, that was the challenge in the film for me. It is a fine line to walk when you are doing an anti-hero kind of film."

Anti-hero is right, Hughes' lead character, Captain Stander, runs the gambit robbing people at gunpoint and charming them at the same time. In one scene, he robs a store and a woman is shot. Even though he leaves with the stolen merchandise, he takes careful time to tend to the woman's wounds. In another scene, he uses a machine gun on the very police officers that he once served with side by side. I found that particular scene troubling.

I asked Hughes if dramatic license was taken to either make Stander more likable or even less likeable.

"Well, there was real complexity to the man, and we were not there to make a film about him being a saint or anything. Like we exposed some things and ego kinds of things that you wouldn't dare if you were trying to paint a saintly portrait. We allow the audience to judge for themselves in that sense.

Hughes continued

"But at the same time the way we were attracted to the story and what made it extraordinary was the time and place that this man did these things and what drove him to rob a bank in the first place which we believe is what he said on the stand in the court which is that 'although you are trying me for robbing banks, I've committed murder in the line of duty.' And that dichotomy, that sort of opposing force, the idea of being someone who is supposed to be the chosen race and uphold the law means that he has to commit murder to be a part of that system. And it just didn't sit right."

"Looking at your filmography it's pretty varied, of course, you've made what three features?" I observed.

"Yeah, HARRIET THE SPY, and then FORCES OF NATURE, and then the third one STANDER." Hughes responded.

"Why take on a biopic?" I asked.

"Well, it's funny, you know, people outside the industry don't really grasp that you can't just pick and choose what films you get to do and the time you get to do them and it's almost a miracle that you're greenlighting a film at all." Hughes told me. "So it is really a question of trying to work on things that people want to make at the right time and feeling that you connect with the story in some way. And myself I made the first two films that were great opportunities but I wanted to wait for the next film for something that I could really disappear into and that I would be willing to give a piece of my soul. I read script after script after script and without really responding until I came across this story and thought that this is so unbelievable and so fascinating that I had to tell it."

STANDER is certainly a fascinating story and Director Bronwen Hughes does an excellent job telling it. Look for STANDER in limited release starting August 6th, 2004, and spreading wider in the weeks that follow.

Listen to the interview in streaming audio (requires Apple Quicktime)

Jonathan W. Hickman