While I was for a quick stay in Durban to help out on a Butterfly Films shoot for a rather big German client I got some good news from Europe: The 52-min documentary ‘Forerunners‘, on which I worked as camera man for director Simon Wood of Saltpeter Productions, was officially selected for the Pan-African Filmfestival in Cannes, France. I take it as a good omen that it was also awarded a special prize by the festivals jury right after it’s first official screening.

Moreover it was also selected for this years Encounters documentary Filmfestival in Cape Town. To learn more, please visit forerunners.co.za

Other than that, I lined up the last leg of shooting in Port Nolloth (under water eventually). Can’t wait to be done shooting finally, to jump head first into the edit of the first film under my own direction…

Yay, I just learned that “After the War” was nominated for the “Internet” category of this year’s Axel-Springer-Preis, a prestigious media award for journalists under 35 in Germany. After being awarded the 2010 Deutscher Reporterpreis this is another major acknowledgement to this work. It further makes me happy to announce that “Then I Became a Muslim“, a piece of my friend Michael Hauri and also a 2470media project, was nominated too. Due to my ongoing shoot in South Africa I won’t be able to attend the awards ceremony on May 5th in Berlin myself, but a lot of 2470media personell will be around to celebrate in case one of the films (or maybe both: there are three prices to each category) should take the glory.

Shooting in Port Nolloth so far has gone really well. We spent a lot of time in Derek’s taxi and got infected by his excitement for the end of the month. That is when Port Nollothans receive their pay slip and can afford his services.

Nick took us to one of his many farms in the desert to brand mark his cattle. He also gave us further insight into his strong religious convictions. Believe it or not, following a 18 month period of drought it actually started raining, after his public prayer for rain.

Goeff shared his thoughts about diamond mining, filled us in with the actual challenges of his job and also revealed the real drive behind his being a diamond diver.

Besides the fun we had shooting and the great friends we made, we were also confronted with a series of minor and major setbacks.

First of all, other than discussed with the company and despite a long series of follow-ups by phone and mail, we never got an answer from Alexkor, the local mine operator, regarding filming permission for Goeff’s boat.

My attempt to get hired hired as a crewman on the boat, which would be a chance to at least step onto the boat legally, required a two-day offshore survival course for sailors and a health medical check-up. I accomplished both even though it meant driving down to Cape Town yet another time. In the end however, it failed with the lack of a work permit.

An endeavor to even take a little joyride around Port Nolloth’s harbour was dramatically stopped by the harbour security personell, as leaving the jetty means entering mine area which is obviously subject to heavy restrictions.

This means that for the shoot on Goeff’s boat, and especially the underwater shooting of the actual mining procedures, which obviously is a key element in the film, we will have to find a different solution.

In the meantime, somebody broke into our house and stole our computers. Even though the footage was saved externally, it was a mission to replace the computers (in a place that is 700km away from the nearest Apple dealer), in order to avoid a substantial delay in shooting. Also somewhere along the way I caught a sickbug that knocked me out for a week.

Butterfly Films were luckily able to lend me a computer. The selection of work I was to submit to the Joop Swart Masterclass was gone with my own one. The poor internet connection in Port Nolloth wouldn’t permit me to access my data backup in Germany quickly enough so that I sadly had to cancel the Masterclass application.

So I think it is time for a little break from the shoot to dedicate myself to reviewing the footage and transcribing the interviews down here in Cape Town. It seems to me, that a little distance will help me to get a clear vision for the last leg of shooting that still lies ahead of us. I am sure we will find a way to get the underwater footage in the end.

What we have got so far looks amazing, that much I can assure you…..

My assistant Lesley and I have now spent roughly a week in Port Nolloth, a small diamond mining town on the South African West Coast, some 700km north of Cape Town. Our production office is a spacious holiday home with an indoor braai area and the beach is just down the road. However, seeing as our project – shooting a documentary on this odd place as an outpost of the civilized world – is quite an ambitious one, we haven’t been lazy. Besides the town itself, we have so far been shooting with 3 really unique characters: There is Goeff, the experienced diamond diver and head of a lovely family of 7 who needs his diving medical renewed – if only it weren’t for his personal feud with the local diving doctor who somehow doesn’t seem to like divers.

Or Nick, the ex-mayor, who, “by the grace of God”, as he says, practically owns the town. As it hasn’t rained for one and a half years, he again turns to God to ask for rain.

And then there is Derek, who after being heavily sentenced for big-time diamond smuggling, tries a law-abiding way of life by fully concentrating on his taxi business that he runs with his old ramshackle Mazda.

There are many more facets to this town, but as our time to shoot in Port Nolloth is limited and the schedule for editing in Cape Town is also rather tight, we’ll leave it with this.

At present we’re waiting to hear back from Alexkor, the local mine operator, for security clearance so that we can start shooting on Goeff’s boat. On a different site we will do the underwater shots.

It looks like it’s going quite well. Thanks to the people at Enjoyyourcamera.com in Hannover, Germany, as well as Reef South Africa, without whose support we wouldn’t have come half as far.

I also appreciate a lot the trust from the German Academic Exchange Service, DAAD. It is in big part the grant they support me with that funds this project.

The picture above shows Goeff’s boat, the Blue Albatros, that is currently being overhauled on the dry slip.

The other day Ruth Eichhorn from GEO, Germany called me to ask, if I would like to be nominated for the Joop Swart Masterclass. The Masterclass, held by the World Press Photo organisation, gives 12 young photographers from all over the world the chance to participate in an exclusive 1 week workshop with high profile professionals in the photojournalism industry. So I said “Yes, of course”. I feel very honoured to be one of the 180 nominees and will now put together a portfolio to submit. Fingers crossed.

The film about the Sailing Doctors of Lamu, Kenya that Anna Telford of Butterfly Films and I, as the cameraman, shot last year is finally edited, color graded and published. I always liked the colorful footage but Anna’s editing with a great sense for details in particular only makes it really special in the end. In that respect my favorite bit in the is the clip where the two children play with the umbrellas the doctors have left outside the clinic until, tragically, the mother comes to take them away.
Seeing the film reminds me of these eventful 5 shooting days on the dhow and squashed into the 4×4. It was a unique adventure for us but the Sailing Doctors team go to these physical and mental extremes on a monthly basis. If it wasn’t for their continuous effort, the people living on the remote islands of the Lamu Archipelago would be left to their own medical devices. Please do not hesitate to visit sailingdoctors.org to find out more about their work and how to make a contribution if you wish.

Don’t worry, I didn’t suddenly turn into a wildlife cinematographer. This clip is only the result of another test with the new underwater housing for my camera. I hope I can use it during my work in Port Nolloth up the South African West Coast, where people mine diamonds on the bottom of the sea. As you can see, the equipment works very well. If only it wasn’t for permissions and all that boring admin stuff…

After my friend Milos Djuric and I successfully tested my underwater gear I am almost ready to leave Hannover. The journey is going to take me back to South Africa, where I will work on a project about submarine diamond mining for my Bachelor’s thesis. Please feel free to read a few previous blog entries on On the Road with Felix Seuffert, whose successor this blog is. More to come soon.

For Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung I worked at the annual 3-Königstreffen of the German Liberal Party, FDP. All the hassle with a rather less exciting job was rewarded with one of the photos on the front page. Click the picture to see what it looked like.