-- --
SCREEN AFRICA EXCLUSIVE:
Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese is a self-taught filmmaker and visual artist from Lesotho, now based in Berlin. His film Mother, I am Suffocating. This is My Last Film About You, was selected for Final Cut in Venice in 2018, where it won six awards. The film premiered in the Berlinale Forum in 2019.
Mosese was one of three filmmakers selected for Biennale College Cinema with his feature film This Is Not A Burial, It's A Resurrection. The film had its international premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Award for Visionary Filmmaking in the World Cinema Dramatic competition. Global sales rights have now been picked up by Memento Film's cinema arthouse label, Artscope.
Set amongst the mountains of land-locked Lesotho, This Is Not A Burial, It's A Resurrection follows an 80-year-old widow as she winds up her earthly affairs, makes arrangements for her burial and prepares to die. But when her village is threatened with forced resettlement due to the construction of a reservoir, she finds a new will to live and ignites a collective spirit of defiance within her community. In the final dramatic moments of her life, Mantoa's legend is forged and made eternal.
Screen Africa spoke to Mosese about the making of his Sundance-award-winning film
Congratulations on This is Not A Burial, It's A Resurrection premiering and winning at Sundance this year! Did you expect to be getting such recognition for the film?
I was definitely not expecting to get such recognition in general! You do this work, and you just hope that it resonates with people. My work is very personal, it's all reactionary, it's not for everyone. It's kind of a film I would personally seek out in the festival. We had only six months to create this film from scratch. There are many things I wish I would have done differently, but I have come to learn to let go. It's not mine anymore, it has its own life.
Why is this film so personal to you?
I drew on real-life events for the film, which is set in my native home, Lesotho. Lesotho is a tiny country completely enveloped by South Africa. Its behemoth mountain ranges make up nearly three-quarters of its terrain and these are responsible for the abundance of water in the country, believed to be among the highest quality in the world. Lesotho annually exports an estimated 780 million cubic metres of water to South Africa; this marks Africa's largest water transfer scheme in history.
As more and more reservoirs are built, thousands of highland villagers are forcibly removed from their land and are relocated to urban living environments, where they not only lose their livestock, crops and way of life, but also their individual and collective identity. Most liken the process of displacement to a death. More and more forests, villages and family relics are being erased in the name of progress. Destroyed and forgotten in a soulless march towards futurity. I am personally not for or against progress. I am more interested in interrogating the psychological, spiritual and social elements that attend it.
When I was a child, my family was evicted from our home. My grandmother's village is undergoing forced resettlement right now. I still know every texture of her house's walls, its thatched roof, the smell of oak trees after rain, the stone kraal. Soon this will be razed and flooded and water will be channelled into the heart of South Africa. Let's just say in every scene and every character there is me; my conflicts, my struggles with faith, my fears, my hopes and dreams.
Can you tell us more about the filmmaking process?
The filmmaking process was definitely challenging. As I said, we had to complete the film in just six months so we had a very packed shooting schedule. The film was shot on location in the remote mountains of Lesotho, where running water and electricity are a scarcity. Equipment, vehicles, crew and other resources were brought into the country from South
Africa. The tiny crew of just fifteen people endured extreme weather conditions while shooting in areas with no road access. Equipment and cast were often transported on horseback and on mules.
Apart from the leads, the cast is made up almost entirely of actual residents from the village where photography took place. It's really interesting because they knew nothing about cinema: they had never seen something like this in their village before, so they had no preconceived ideas about acting. Everything was really natural and we made sure the set design was always as minimalistic as possible. I didn't want anyone to feel like they were being watched or under scrutiny.
I come from a visual world. As much as I love language, visuals take precedence in my work. I knew the texture, I knew the composition, pace, tone and the feel I wanted. And I tried to find a playful space on set, to stumble upon things. Pierre de Villiers, my DoP, and I have a synchronised love and passion for beauty. His way of seeing light is just amazing. He comes from the commercial world and it was his first film - it's incredible. I also trusted him with the choice of camera we used, which was the Sony Venice. It served us best in low light conditions.
What was the decision-making behind editing the film yourself?
As a director, I'm obsessed with how to tell the story through the edit of a film. Editing is the same as writing, it's so important to really bring all your ideas to the screen. But, of course, sometimes it's nice to bring someone external in to edit your film they'll bring a new perspective to it.
We had some very poignant scenes and my aim was to make sure the edit was paced to reflect those scenes. It was built around them and the framing, so everything was as visual and slow as possible,
Most recent headlines
04/08/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, is excited to announce Santiago Solanas as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO)....
03/06/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, a...
28/04/2024
Mediahaus delivers the first SRT live-streaming sports production over 5G with U...
27/04/2024
PORTLAND, Oregon Audinate Group Limited, the developer of the Dante AV-over-IP solution, announced significant new additions to Dante Connect, its cloud-based D...
27/04/2024
TORONTO Bell Media has launched 10 English and French-language FAST channels featuring entertainment, factual, news, and sports programming. The new free stream...
27/04/2024
An extensive new analysis of the news segments in the broadcast evening news programs of ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS has found that broadcasters devoted most of their...
27/04/2024
GERMANTOWN, Md. EchoStar's Hughes Network Systems has opened a new manufacturing facility and private 5G incubation center in Germantown, Maryland....
27/04/2024
Harry Pappas, one of three brothers who founded Pappas Telecasting Companies in 1971, died April 24. He was 78 years old....
27/04/2024
ATLANTA and LONDON Mexican telecommunications and broadcast company Televisa has selected Synamedia for an overhaul of its broadcast distribution....
27/04/2024
Participate in the Survey - The Impact of AI on Media and the Creative Industry
Pascal Wagner April 26, 2024
0 Comments
By participating in this surve...
27/04/2024
SDVI Rally Access Workstation Earns Two Top Awards at 2024 NAB Show
Brie Clayton April 26, 2024
0 Comments
SDVI, the leading platform provider for clo...
27/04/2024
Berklee's Music and Health Institute Launches Community Health Musician Cert...
27/04/2024
Charter Communications reported higher first-quarter profits despite continued cord-cutting and competition for broadband customers....
27/04/2024
Two environmentally-focused groups are partnering to engage the unscripted TV world in finding better ways to address climate change. Reality of Change is an ec...
27/04/2024
Sarah Garcia has been promoted to weekend anchor at KTLM McAllen, Texas, known as Telemundo 40. Starting April 27, she will anchor Noticias Telemundo 40 weekend...
27/04/2024
CBS Sports said it launched a new 24-hour free, ad supported streaming television (FAST) channel devoted to the UEFA Champions League....
27/04/2024
Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts received $35.4 million in compensation in 2023, up 11% from the previous year, according to a proxy statement filed by th...
27/04/2024
Art Happens Here With John Lithgow, which sees the actor study dance, ceramics, silk-screen printing and vocal jazz with students in Los Angeles, debuts on PBS ...
27/04/2024
Remember Leave It to Beaver? Bewitched? Dragnet? When cable ratings were rising?...
27/04/2024
Next up for the weekend binge at Catchy Comedy is Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. Every weekend, Catchy Comedy features The Catchy Binge, a marathon of a classic sitcom....
26/04/2024
Sundance Film Festival CDMX 2024 kicks-off today with screenings in 5 theaters in Mexico City and the opening-night film, FRIDA, directed by Carla Guti rrez...
26/04/2024
[Editor's Note: This interview is part of a larger feature about the women d...
26/04/2024
Once again this year, SGL Carbon opened its doors to interested children and young people. On the occasion of the German Girls and Boys Day, which took place on...
26/04/2024
Orders1 of $5.5 billion; book-to-bill of 1.06x
Revenue of $5.2 billion, up 17%,...
26/04/2024
Five Considerations For Communications Modernization In The 21st Century
In the digital-enabled battlespace, the Joint Force needs to shoot, move and communica...
26/04/2024
CBS Sports has launched Champions League as a new, 24-hour streaming channel that will serve as the year-round destination for nonstop highlights of the UEFA ...
26/04/2024
Despite tough competition in the streaming space, Roku reported solid results in Q1 2024, beating revenue expectations, with total net revenue up 19% YoY to $88...
26/04/2024
LONDON AND TORONTO Pinewood Toronto Studios has appointed Sarah Farrell as general manager of the Studios in downtown Toronto....
26/04/2024
Quantum to Offer Advanced Filesharing Technology and Performance in StorNext and...
26/04/2024
FilmLight Colour Awards welcomes 2024 entries and introduces new Emerging Talen...
26/04/2024
Picture Shop Announces Chris Evans as Head of Unscripted
Brie Clayton April 26, 2024
0 Comments
Picture Shop announced Chris Evans will lead Unscripte...
26/04/2024
Participate in a Survey - The Impact of AI on Media and the Creative Industry
Pascal Wagner April 26, 2024
0 Comments
By participating in this survey,...
26/04/2024
Toy maker Mattel said it is working with Samsung to launch its first free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels later this year....
26/04/2024
Trusted Media Brands (TMB) said it named Marty Moe as president....
26/04/2024
Ron Howard is the director on Jim Henson Idea Man, a documentary that premieres on Disney Plus May 31. Henson of course created Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Big...
26/04/2024
The ice continues to melt under the regional sports network business as the Seattle Kraken of the National Hockey League have made a long-term deal to broadcast...
26/04/2024
Heading into the upfronts, Warner Bros. Discovery said it launched Olli, a first-party data platform advertiser can use for converged, targeted advertising camp...
26/04/2024
CBS has renewed the drama The Equalizer, which will see season five on in 2024-2025. Queen Latifah stars....
26/04/2024
The CW has entered into an exclusive multiyear broadcast partnership for the Miss USA Pageant and the Miss Teen USA Pageant. The 73rd Miss USA Pageant will air ...
26/04/2024
Fuse Media isn't mincing words in a campaign urging its young viewers to register and participate in the 2024 elections....
26/04/2024
Dead Boy Detectives, a series from Neil Gaiman about a detective agency staffed by ghosts, debuts on Netflix April 25. George Rexstrew and Jayden Revri are in t...
26/04/2024
The Story Collective has gradually repurposed the former Mortlake Brewery to include production offices, workshops and sound stages
By Matthew Corrigan
Publi...
26/04/2024
Perkett joins the company following a 25 year career in product management, product marketing, engineering and user experience (UX) across multiple industries
...
26/04/2024
Teradek, the industry leader in wireless video transmitters and receivers, announced today the launch of new Bolt 6 LT 750 and Bolt 6 Monitor Module 750 RX with...
26/04/2024
NEW YORK Amagi has appointed Richard Perkett chief product officer (CPO)....
26/04/2024
WASHINGTON, D.C. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has announced the results of the 2024 NAB Radio and Television Board of Directors elections. The...
26/04/2024
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. & NEW YORK Mattel has announced a deal to launch its first three 24/7 free ad supported streaming (FAST) channels on Samsung TV Plus, Samsung...
26/04/2024
PORTLAND, Maine Viewers here can now receive the NextGen TV signals of five local stations with the launch of ATSC 3.0 service from host station WPFO, which is ...
26/04/2024
TORONTO Rogers Communications has signed a 10-year agreement with Comcast to bring the latest Xfinity products and technology to Canadians....
-- -- 
