Angus Gibson
I was brought up in Natal in a sheltered middle class household during the years of high apartheid. In 1975 I went to Wits in Johannesburg to study Economics. I decided in my first year, after seeing Antonioni’s The Passenger, I wanted to make movies. In 1978 I dropped out of university, hoping to leave the country and pursue a career in film. Instead I found myself on a train off to do army basics at an infantry camp in Kimberley.
The SADF, in a bid to improve their dire image in rural black communities, was placing teachers and doctors in schools all over the country. I found myself teaching English and maths in a black school on the border of the Kalahari Desert. I made friends in the village and for the first time had an opportunity to view South Africa from a perspective different to my own.
I returned to Johannesburg more engaged and interested in South Africa than I had ever been before. I no longer wanted to run off to Europe.In 1983 I made an hour television drama for SABC television. Jasone was about a young soccer star from the country, who travels to Soweto to try his luck in the big city. I cast real soccer stars in different roles and the lead, Patrick Shai, who had never acted before, won best actor at the local television awards.
The next year I made a documentary on Kosi Bay, an estuary on the border of Mozambique. This had been commissioned as a wildlife documentary, but the film mostly observed the lives of the Tembe Tonga community that lived there. At the time black people were not supposed to be represented on “white” television. I became increasingly aware that I was being compromised by the dictates of the local broadcaster.
In 1985, together with other like-minded filmmakers, I formed Free Filmmakers in order to carve out a space to make the kind of films that reflected the country we were living in. Together with Mtutuzeli Matshoba, I developed a verité film which would track the lives of four young Sowetan activists in their David and Goliath style war against the country’s security forces. British channel 4 commissioned the documentary but it was halted by the press restrictions of the 1986 state of emergency. At the time I joined the Junction Avenue Theatre Company to workshop Sophiatown, a play about the destruction by the apartheid government of a mixed race suburb near the centre of Johannesburg, which was the home of black artists, intellectuals and journalists as well as the notorious gangs of the era.Together with the artist, William Kentridge, I directed and edited Freedom Square & Back of the Moon for British Channel 4. The documentary used the Sophiatown stage play, which had become an international hit, as a vehicle to explore the memory of Sophiatown. The film noir movies that the Sophiatown residents watched informed the lighting and style of the documentary.I went on to edit William’s early animation films, which have been exhibited in galleries all over the world.I continued to make documentaries for British television, amongst them a three hour documentary series, Soweto, a history which traced the history of the township as told by the people that lived there.I also directed 7 Up South Africa, the South African chapter of Granada Television’s flagship documentary series which documented the lives and opinions of 20 seven year olds from across the spectrum of South African experience. This won the Star Tonight Award for best feature documentary. In 1994, I co-directed with Jo Menell the authorized biography, Mandela, Son of Africa, Father of a nation, for Jonathan Demme’s production company. This was nominated for an Oscar and won the Amnesty International Media Spotlight award and the Pare Lorentz Award.
In 1997, I developed and co-directed the multiple award-winning television youth drama series, Yizo Yizo, along with partner, Teboho Mahlatsi. The series transformed the aesthetic of television in South Africa. It unleashed a storm of controversy and achieved the highest viewing figures ever in the country.
In 1999 I directed 14 UP South Africa, the next instalment of the Granada series, which won the Avanti award for best feature documentary.
I co-produced the second, equally popular and controversial season of Yizo Yizo in 2000/2001, and designed and executed 70 audio-visual installations for the Apartheid Museum which is the most visited museum in South Africa.
In 2002, I created 20 audio-visual elements for the Hector Pieterson Museum, a multi-media installation about the events leading up to and including the student uprising of June 16, 1976.
I was head of development for the third and last series of Yizo Yizo, and I directed 5 episodes. The last series also won many awards including The Japan Prize and was screened in its entirety at the Venice Film Festival.
In 2005/6 I directed four of the Heartlines series, three were television hours and the fourth was feature length. The feature about a young convict that leaves prison and is taken into the household of a priest has won awards at festivals in the U.S.A., Australia, South Africa, Mexico and a special jury prize in Japan.
In 2006 I directed 21 UP South Africa, which won the Royal Television Society award for best feature documentary.
In 2007 I started developing and writing Hotel Kalifornia, a near future action feature set in the inner city of Johannesburg.
In 2010, amongst other projects, I produced Zone 14, a biweekly prime time drama series about two warring families that own a soccer team. It was a first in that it was shot with multiple cameras on a live location in Soweto. It reached a vast audience of all ages.
Together with Miguel Salazar, in 2011, I directed La Toma, a feature documentary in Colombia. The film follows the contemporary trial of Colonel Plazas Vega and looks back at the event in 1985, when M19 guerrillas laid siege to the Palace of Justice on the central square of Bogotá. Plazas commanded the army tanks, which invaded the Palace and left 100 dead, including the great brains of the judiciary. The documentary functions both as human tragedy and action thriller. In 2012 I developed and was a producer on Isibaya, a telenovela which follows the fortunes of a polygamous family that runs taxis between Johannesburg and the Thukela Valley. In its first year of transmission, it constantly trended on social media, achieved record viewing figures and won multiple awards. In 2013, together with Jemma Jupp, I directed South Africa 28up for Al Jazeera and ITV. It was nominated for a BAFTA award in Britain. In 2014 I designed a permanent installation on South Africa’s Truth & Reconciliation Commission for the Apartheid Museum. It was included in the South African exhibition at the 2015 Venice Biennale. I developed and co-directed Ayeye, a drama series that explored the wild lives and sexuality of three thirty-somethings who are rising stars in the commercials industry. In 2016 I directed Back of the Moon, a feature film set in 1958 in the doomed urban ghetto of Sophiatown, about a brief encounter between a gangster and the singing star that he worships, on the night before he is to be forcibly evicted from his house by the forces of Apartheid. The film won best South African Feature at the Durban Film Festival,Best Narrative Feature at the Pan African Film Festival and Best International Feature at the Toronto Black Film Festival as well the Montreal Black Film Festival.
In 2017 I produced a telenovela, Isithembiso, set in the heady student world of Johannesburg. In 2021 I was the Showrunner of the first season of an epic 12 part historical drama, Shaka iLembe about the 18th/19thcentury King of the Zulus, Shaka. The series broke audience records in South Africa. In 2023 I was awarded a GQ Lifetime Achievement Award And in 2024 I was awarded the Order of Ikhamanga by President Cyril Ramaphosa. In 2024 I am busy with the second season of Shaka iLembe.
I am a company director of The Bomb Shelter Film Company (Pty) Ltd along with partners Desireé Markgraaff and Isaac Shongwe.