The Silver Fez Explained

The Silver Fez
Director:Lloyd Ross
Producer:Joëlle Chesselet
Runtime:83 minutes
Country:South Africa
Screenplay:Rian Malan
Cinematography:Lloyd Ross
Editing:Lloyd Ross
Music:Warrick Sony

The Silver Fez is a 2009 South African documentary feature film directed by Lloyd Ross.

Synopsis

The story tells of Kaatji Davids, a house painter who lives in Cape Town. He is very poor, with only an old banjo as a musical instrument, but he and a few close friends dream of beating the wealthy Hadji Bucks, undisputed champion of Cape Malay music. The prize is the Silver Fez, the "Holy Grail" of Cape Town's Islamic subculture. The contest involves thousands of musicians and a wide variety of tunes.[1] [2] The Silver Fez (the name deriving from the fez, a type of felt hat worn by Malay men in the Cape) is a competition of all-male choirs from the Malay community.[3]

Background and themes

The film explores identity and marginalisation among the Cape Coloureds (of which the Cape Malays are a sub-group): the narrator, Mac, says: "You know, for my people, the so-called Cape coloureds of Cape Town, many of us feel like we are lost in a no-man’s-land between Europe and Asia, unsure of where we fit in". It also shows the feeling of belonging that the men have in the choirs.[3]

The music originates from the days of slavery in South Africa, and the "Nederlandslied", a type of song that combines quarter-note vocal solos found in Arabic music with Western instrumental tunes. The lyrics have stayed the same.[3]

Production

The Silver Fez was directed by Lloyd Ross, who was a composer before moving into filmmaking. He founded the anti-apartheid record label Shifty Records in 1983, and then began making music videos for some of the musicians before starting to make documentary films in the mid 1990s.[2]

The film, 83 minutes long, was made in colour using an HDCAM, and uses both the South African English and Afrikaans languages.[2]

Awards

The film was nominated for or won the following awards at various film festivals in 2009:

In 2010, The Silver Fez was nominated for the Golden Horn for Best Documentary Feature at South African Film and Television Awards (SAFTA).[4]

Notes and References

  1. News: The Silver Fez. 23 March 2012. Al Jazeera. Witness. 15 June 2009. text and video.
  2. Book: 7ª Edición. 86–87. Festival de Cine Africano de Tarifa / Tarifa African Film Festival (FCAT). May 2010. fr, es, en . Text has been copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. (See talk page)
  3. Web site: The Song remains the same . The Mail & Guardian. Shaun . De Waal . 16 September 2009 . 14 February 2023.
  4. Web site: The Silver Fez . IMDb . 14 February 2023.
  5. Web site: The Silver Fez [videorecording] : a film set in Cape Town's unique Malay choir culture ]. library catalog entry . SearchWorks catalog. . 14 February 2023.