A Film by Kurt Orderson

*YOUR INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY

SYNOPSIS

Arthur ‘Slewboy’ Claasen is a talented, impulsive graffiti artist at the top of his game. By night, he and his crew - THE WRITERS BLOC - are staking out their claim, bombing the city with rebellious art despite Cape Town officials using specialized units to fight graffiti. When ambitious City Councilman Rodney Abrahams takes the helm of a new project to restore colonial statues in the city centre, the crew brushes it off with characteristic nonchalance. Because by day, Slewboy's hustling and basking in the acclaim and respect from the underground Hip Hop scene. But at home, in the ghetto, on the periphery of the city, he’s Arthur Claasen, an unemployed errant son to his factory worker mother and older sister Nikki. Still, he dreams of making it big and taking his family out of the hood to the other side of Table Mountain, the geographic barrier that separates the rich from the poor. That all changes when after a violent encounter with private security, Slewboy is swept into a psychological dimension parallel, ApeTown, the zoo-inspired world he creates through his art. ApeTown is an urban adventure film that seamlessly blends coming-of-age themes with elements of magical realism.

PRODUCER NOTE OF INTENTION

Apetown is a call to wake up from sleep, from blindness, from ignorance. It is a call to awaken to the current shifting currents defined by time, energy, and space. It is a story that speaks to the seismic social and cultural shifts occurring in our world as I write this.

Apetown is an urban adventure that brings together a coming-of-age drama with elements of magical realism. It starts as a free-wheeling story of youth abandons and arrogance and morphs into a tale of personal introspection and awakening. South Africa is still coming to terms with generational trauma and its consequences, the disconnection between the old and the new, the present and the future. Our youth characters and Slewboy, in particular, are managing this tightrope as they try to navigate who they areApetown is a youth-centered world, an urban adventure that celebrates art and its power to liberate, celebrate, and authenticate lives. Apetown is situated in the world of Hip Hop culture, which has always stood for a revolutionary voice and has now become the de facto voice of youth globally.

We believe this story and this world are needed in our country and continent for all youth who feel disconnected and invisible. Beyond South Africa and the African continent, Apetown can reach a global audience; young people who speak through their art, young and older people who love Hip Hop, and people from marginalized and invisible communities. Apetown speaks to the most powerful demographic in popular culture; a youth audience that has its finger on the pulse of social and cultural change. This is a time when art is being called upon to dislodge ideas of exclusivity and privilege. It is a moment of reckoning, recognition, and revelation.

Apetown speaks to the power of art and culture to conceive and create change.

FINANCE

We are in a formal co-production with serious films in the Netherlands.  Our budget is USD $1,250,000.

We have currently raised USD95,000. We are able to raise an additional USD 691,000 between local funds in South Africa and the Netherlands; hence, we are still looking to raise USD 464,000 to close our finance gap.

CREATIVE TEAM

WRITERS

Rae Human is a screenwriter and filmmaker who has worked in various positions in the independent film industry with Azania Rizing Productions. From screenwriting to line producing, she has gone on to direct a two-part documentary about texturism within the family called Pittekoppe. Her short film Suburban Terrestrial has been officially developed through funding from the NFVF and is yet to be produced.

Adrian Van Wyk is a filmmaker, creative producer, and cultural historian from Cape Town, South Africa. He holds an MA in History from Stellenbosch University, where his dissertation explored the diasporic influence of Hip Hop culture on Cape Flats' periphery. Currently, he is co-directing and producing "Notes From The Underground: A Cape Town Hip Hop Story," supported by the South African National Film and Video Foundation, which brings his MA research into cinematic form. The documentary short that he produced titled "What The Soil Remembers,"  which premiered at IFFR, earned the Ammodo Tiger Short Award at this festival and won the Regina International Film Festival's Best International Short Documentary award. In 2023, he was selected as an artist in residence by the Singapore Art Museum, where he is crafting the feature fiction titled "Bedrock," set in South Africa's Northern Cape.

DIRECTOR

Kurt Orderson is an award-winning filmmaker from Cape Town. He has directed and produced eleven feature-length documentary films shot between five continents and a plethora of short films. His films serve as a creative pedagogy, utilizing historical, archival, political, and transnational solidarity traditions. He explores unknown stories and poses critical questions to craft new narratives within ever-changing settings. He is a member-owner of the cooperative New Day Films, a filmmaker-run distribution company that has provided educators with social issue documentaries since 1971.

PRODUCER

Bridget Pickering started working in the industry as a Casting Assistant at Universal Pictures in NYC for Bonnie Timmermann, casting on films such as Last of the Mohicans and Glengarry Glen Ross.

Her experience and interest have always shifted between genres, working between documentary and fiction. During this time, she produced a film for the Africa Dreaming Series, THE HOMECOMING, screened on Arte and directed a film for the Mama Africa series, UNO’S WORLD, which received a limited release in the United States with an introductory narration from Queen Latifah.

Her passion has always led her to stories that reflected a political point of view -  Bridget Co-produced FLAME, the story of women who fought in the Zimbabwe liberation struggle. In 2004, she was approached to become part of a seminal film on the Rwanda genocide, HOTEL RWANDA, which was nominated for an Oscar.

She's produced over ten television series, which have been screened on the main broadcast platforms in South Africa. Some of these include U Gugu no Andile; Hustle; End Game. More recently, she co-produced a hybrid documentary utilizing animation, LIYANA, which won Best Documentary at the LA Film Festival and at the Durban Film Festival and over 40 international awards.

Additionally, Bridget has produced independent features; Taste of Rain and The Chemo Club.