| The Silver Fez | |
|---|---|
 DVD cover | |
| Directed by | Lloyd Ross |
| Screenplay by | Rian Malan |
| Produced by | Joëlle Chesselet |
| Cinematography | Lloyd Ross |
| Edited by | Lloyd Ross |
| Music by | Warrick Sony |
Release date | 2009 |
Running time | 83 minutes |
| Country | South Africa |
The Silver Fez is a 2009 South African documentary feature film directed by Lloyd Ross.
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]
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]
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]
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]
Cape Coloureds are a South African ethnic classification consisting primarily of persons of mixed race African, Asian and European descent.
Coloureds refers to members of multiracial ethnic communities in South Africa who may have ancestry from African, European, and Asian people. The intermixing of different races began in the Cape province of South Africa, with Dutch settlers, African and Malaysian slaves intermixing with the indigenous Khoi tribes of that region. Later various other European nationals also contributed to the growing mixed race people, who would later be officially classified as coloured by the apartheid government in the 1950s.
The fez, also called tarboosh/tarboush, is a felt headdress in the shape of a short, cylindrical, truncated (peakless) hat, usually red, typically with a black tassel attached to the top. The name "fez" may refer to the Moroccan city of Fez, where the dye to color the hat was extracted from crimson berries. However, its origins are disputed.
Cape Malays also known as Cape Muslims or Malays, are a Muslim community or ethnic group in South Africa. They are the descendants of enslaved and free Muslims from different parts of the world, specifically Indonesia and other Asian countries, who lived at the Cape during Dutch and British rule.
The Kaapse Klopse, formerly known as the Coon Carnival and officially called Cape Town Minstrel Carnival, is a Cape coloured minstrel festival that takes place annually on 2 January in Cape Town, South Africa. It is also referred to as Tweede Nuwe jaar. As many as 13,000 minstrels take to the streets garbed in bright colours, either carrying colourful umbrellas or playing an array of musical instruments. The minstrels are self-organised into klopse. The custom has been preserved since the mid-19th century.
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