SMS Sugar Man | |
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Directed by | Aryan Kaganof |
Written by | Aryan Kaganof |
Produced by | African Noise Foundation |
Starring | Aryan Kaganof Leigh Graves Deja Bernhardt |
Cinematography | Eran Tahor |
Edited by | Aryan Kaganof |
Music by | Michael Blake |
Release date |
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Running time | 81 minutes |
Country | South Africa |
Language | English |
SMS Sugar Man is a South African narrative film shot entirely on Sony Ericsson W900i camera phones in 2008. [1] The experimental feature film was directed by Aryan Kaganof and used eight cell phones to make the film. [2] [3]
SMS Sugar Man is the first feature-length film in the world to be made entirely with mobile camera phones. [2] [1] [4]
The film reveals the story of a pimp and two high-class prostitutes with some traveling incidents around Johannesburg on a Christmas Eve.
SMS Sugar Man was shot in eleven days with eight camera phones for less than 1 million rand ($164,100). Producer Michelle Wheatley said, "We wanted to make a radically low-budget film to show that anyone can do this". [2]
Lizelle Bisschoff and Ann Overbergh wrote in "Digital as the New Popular in African Cinema? Case Studies from the Continent", published in Research in African Literatures , that SMS Sugar Man is a "semi-pornographic and highly erotic and subversive film, with a political subtext". [5] They said that even though popular and easily accessible equipment was used to make the film, it cannot be called "popular art", but rather "underground" and "experimental". [5]
In a review of SMS Sugar Man in Under Ground Film Journal, Mike Everleth described the film as "a poetic, haunting film that uses a bold new technology to capture the most basic and primal of human interactions". [1] He said that despite being shot entirely with camera phones, the film "never comes across as being gimmicky", and "never takes the cheap route in the telling of the story". [1]
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