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I See the Point



"When you listen to the sea, it sounds like it's crying. There's a lot of love in the water."

There's also a lot of love in Sea Point Days, Francois Verster’s affectionate analysis of a post-card perfect seaside enclave in Cape Town, South Africa. The film had its world premiere at TIFF on Saturday afternoon, nary two weeks after its first finished print rolled out, as Verster informed a crowded house at AMC before the screening.

Formerly an all-white suburb, Sea Point now plays host to people of all ages, races, classes and ideologies. With its casual collection of eclectic eccentrics, complete with a homeless man who casts himself in the role of philosophizing fool, the film brings to mind Fellini’s portraits of seaside life and the inherent surrealism that the tides seem to pull out of people.

An emphatic white evangelist preaching his own skewed gospel on street corners shares equal space with a young black man who brags about his clothing brands and mistakes the iconic Che Guevera image on his T-Shirt for Bob Marley. One person optimistically exclaims that “Black and white is one thing now – we live together,” while another declares in frustration “We’re supposed to unite, to be one. We’re not one.”

The articulate Verster capped the proceedings by offering additionally insights into his incisively structured and skillfully observed film, which you can see Tuesday at 8:30pm at AMC 9, or Friday September 12 at 5:30 at Varsity 7.

Pictured above: director Francois Verster (centre) with producers Lucinda Englehart and Neil Brandt