Lucilla Blankenberg is a filmmaker living in Cape Town. She studied Communications and Psychology through UNISA and filmmaking at City Varsity in Cape Town. After City Varsity she bought an edit suite and taught herself to use it. While she was learning to use the edit suite, Jack Lewis hired her as a transcriber and she eventually got roped into being a partner at Idol Pictures.
When I met up with Lucilla Blankenberg she was in the middle of directing one 60 second PSA for ‘Siyayinqoba Beat It!’, producing a feature length documentary on the South African textile industry called ‘Atlantis’ and working on an SABC documentary called ‘Black People don’t Swim’. It was difficult to find a gap that suited both of us, but eventually I trekked out to Muizenberg and spent half an hour talking to her at the end of one of those cold Cape Town June days.
‘Don’t Shoot’ is a film that questions the news the public receives and the messenger’s role in this news. The messenger in this instance is Riaan Cruywagen.
THE MUSIC AND COMMENTS AT THE START OF THE FILM SUGGEST WE’RE IN FOR SOMETHING CLEVER AND AMUSING, YET IT SEEMS TO GET A BIT TENSE TOWARDS THE END. IS THIS WHAT YOU WERE HOPING FOR?
I thought the film would be simple; I thought he lied to us for so many years and in the film I would get him to admit that he lied to us. And then, when I met him I was a bit star struck, he was so polite that I didn’t want to hurt him, I didn’t want to offend him. So I couldn’t launch into a straightforward attack on him. I gave him a chance to explain himself and why he did what he did.
WHAT DID RIAAN CRUYWAGEN DO?
It isn’t included in the film because he doesn’t give us enough to work with when he talks about it, but he was there at the start of the SABC and he was head of SABC news when it first started. He told us that someone else started reading the news and then that person left for some reason or other and he stepped in. But he had been a news gatherer and he had also been the Washington foreign correspondent for the SABC. So, he was more than just a news reader, he knew how to make news and put stories together and he was aware that the news he was reading out to South Africa wasn’t the truth. I tried to get him to admit to lying to us, but he kept evading my question. We interviewed him for an hour before he went on to read the news and then he had to go into the studio. Just before he went on to read the news, I asked him some of the same questions again, but he gave me the same answers as before.
IF HE LIED TO US DURING APARTHEID, WHY DO YOU THINK HE’S STILL READING THE NEWS UNDER OUR NEW DISPENSATION?
He does his job so well, that’s why he’s still there. He reads the news uncritically unthinkly. The SABC can rely on him to be uncritical today too.
WHAT WERE YOU HOPING TO ACHIEVE WITH THE FILM?
I would like to change people’s perceptions of the news; I would like them to be more critical. I want them to think that if he lied to us for twenty years, why should we believe him now when he tells us what happened in the world today?
DID YOU WARM TO HIM?
He’s quite amusing and seriously smooth. He hardly stutters or repeats himself. He speaks really well. I did like him.
WAS HE EASY TO WORK WITH?
Yes, he was very agreeable. He’s also been in a music video where he and the bass player swop roles – so he plays bass and the bass player reads the news. He’s also proud to be the longest serving news reader and he liked talking about that.
ARE YOU A MEMBER OF THE RIAAN CRUYWAGEN FAN CLUB, THEN?
No, I’m not a member of the fan club.
HOW DID YOU GET HIM TO AGREE TO BE IN THE FILM?
He wasn’t immediately game. When I approached him, he said I would need to speak to the SABC and check with them; when the SABC said it was fine, he told me to speak to his news editor. He put in a good word for us with the news editor and when his editor said it was fine, then he said he would think about it. I had to send him the questions I wanted to ask and explain how I planned to use them. And then he agreed to do the interview.
HOW MUCH TIME DID YOU SPEND WITH HIM?
We only had an hour for the interview and we only had one chance. We couldn’t do it again. He didn’t want us to film him anywhere else, he refused to have us filming him while he was in make-up. He actually called it panel beating.
DID YOU FILM THE INTERVIEW AT THE SABC?
We filmed the interview at his UASA (United Association of South Africa – a union that represents workers in the diamond, motor, manufacturing, transport, mining and engineering industries – where Riaan Cruywagen works when he’s not reading the news) office in Johannesburg. He chose the boardroom and we simply had to work with it. So, we lit only him and no-one else to illustrate the point that what you see on tv is made to look that way – so he was lit really well and we were there all grainy and underexposed. We also decided to film him from the side during the interview because who has ever seen Riaan Cruywagen from the side – we only ever see him from the front on tv.
WHY DID YOU PUT YOURSELF AND THE CREW IN THE FILM?
I wanted to show that there is a difference between what we see on tv and how things really are; we always assume that the news is factual and true, but the main point of the film is that we can’t take this for granted. So, by putting myself and the crew into the film, I was trying to show that there is a process to making the news and to making film; that what you see at the end of it all is someone’s idea of what you need to see, not necessarily the truth.
That’s also why we show behind-the-scenes in the newsroom; it’s the media at work, making the truth for the public.
THERE ARE SOME OTHER PEOPLE YOU HAVE IN THE FILM AND IT’S NOT CLEAR WHO THESE PEOPLE ARE OR WHY YOU HAVE THEIR COMMENTS IN THE FILM.
I wanted those people to be vox pop type comments. I shot all over the place for those, at the station at taxi ranks, at UWC, but in the end they didn’t really work. They seemed random and unconnected with too much movement, like a magazine insert and they weren’t very critical. So, I decided to direct and structure the film a bit more and I asked some of my friends who had been around through the apartheid news for their comments. I was surprised that no-one was angry about him having lied to us all those years, even my friends. Everyone likes him. I think he does his job excellently, which is why people like him.
WHY DON’T YOU TELL VIEWERS WHO THESE PEOPLE ARE?
The film is about the whole idea of objectivity in the media being a false concept because you can construct anything you want. You can create your own world – the news does it, so I did it too: I created a world where I don’t have to explain who people are in the film.
THE WAY YOU’VE STRUCTURED THE FILM IT ALMOST SUGGESTS THAT THE UNCRITICAL AND BLINDLY ACCEPTING PEOPLE ARE YOUNG WHITE WOMEN AND THAT THE MORE CRITICAL AND QUESTIONING PEOPLE ARE MIDDLE-AGED BLACK PEOPLE. WHY IS IT LIKE THIS?
I get that from a lot of my friends when they see the film. Like I said, the vox pops I shot originally didn’t work for me and because the film is about artifice, I felt I could manipulate the content to convey the message I wanted it to convey. So, I chose my friends because I knew they would be more analytical than the vox pops. And those girls at the start of the film, they say the nicest things about Cruywagen and more importantly, I was looking for someone to say that he had been on tv her whole life.
HOW CLOSE IS THE FILM TO YOUR ORIGINAL SCRIPT?
I wrote the treatment with an introduction, a body and some of the ending and I chose the moments in history that I wanted to ask him about. Obviously Riaan didn’t say what I wanted him to say, so that changed, but I stuck to most of my original questions. In the original script I had him reading the official, but untrue news and then showed the unofficial, but true version and this set-up a straightforward contradiction. This was difficult to execute because you know how the SABC’s archives are, they’re not very organized and I couldn’t easily look at a catalogue and choose the news that was read by Riaan Cruywagen. I had to select Afrikaans news around a certain date and then watch all of it to find the news that Riaan Cruywagen had read. This affected the making of the film considerably, as I could only lock down the final archive that I wanted two days before online.
HOW LONG DID IT TAKE TO EDIT THE FILM, THEN?
I think it took about four weeks. I captured the footage in the beginning for a week and then the editor, Jari Heikenien arrived. Brian Tilley, the producer, suggested I leave Jari alone to go through the footage and then put something together. We left him alone for two days and then we went out to re-shoot because, as I said, I wasn’t happy with the way the vox pops had turned out.
I think it was great that Yari wasn’t South African – there were various editors on the Why Democracy series, who were brought in by the producers to work on the series – because he was able to view the footage with both a fresh eye and also without the baggage that I have from apartheid. So for him this was footage about this guy, Riaan Cruywagen, whom he didn’t have any history with.
WHAT WAS YOUR BUDGET LIKE?
The whole budget was around R8 000 or R9 000 a minute for eight-and-a-half minutes, which turned into eleven minutes.
WHAT DID YOU LEARN ABOUT FILMMAKING FROM MAKING THIS FILM?
I learnt a lot about producing from working with Don Edkins and Brian Tilley, actually. They were always under a lot of pressure and they didn’t crack. I produce all the time and this film was only the second time that I got to direct. I found that as producers they were very nurturing, whereas when I produce, I never step away from a film, I find it very hard to let go of it. It was good for me to work with a different team of people.
WHAT DO YOU THINK MAKES A GOOD DOCUMENTARY?
One of my favourite films in the Why Democracy series is ‘Vote for Me’ about the school children in China running for class monitor.
But I think a lot of time and money makes a good documentary. I think I could make a good documentary if I had the time. I always feel that I run out of time and I can’t let it go. I would like to make more satire, but it’s a hard format to get right. I try to be irreverent – I want to play with things more.
I like different types of documentaries, but I especially like cheeky films. There are some films that are poorly made but I find I forgive them if the story is good.
WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES OF MAKING A SHORT DOCUMENTARY FILM VS A LONGER FILM?
There is less time to waste, every shot and idea have to be well planned and executed. Although, I’d like to believe that this is the same for long films.
Interviewed by Tina-Louise Smith
‘Don’t Shoot’ plays at Encounters 2008:
Johannesburg on Saturday 28 June
Cape Town on Thursday 3 July, Sunday 6 July and Friday 11 July.
More on the Why Democracy? series.
