On Cape Town as a Lego City

Timmy Henny captures Cape Town as legoland

Capetonian filmmaker shows what Cape Town looks like from above in 'Mini Cape'

Watch 'Mini Cape', an excellent short film about Cape Town by Timmy Henny and read an interview with him below.

Timmy Henny, who are you?I'm a director of photography who started off in the photographic field, but in the last few years I‘ve moved more towards film. I've shot commercials, music videos, documentaries and corporate videos. I just finished shooting a T.V. series for DSTV called ‚'Braai for Heritage'. The show travelled all over the country building 'gees' and celebrating our heritage by visiting heritage spots and braaing with a wide range of diverse South Africans. I am currently working on the video content for 'A Year in the Wild', which was initiated by Scott Ramsay, he is travelling to over 30 national parks around South Africa to document them. I am producing a video of each park highlighting their immense beauty.

Tell me about your film 'Mini Cape'.'Mini Cape' was filmed in February 2011 as an extramural project to capture a day in the life of Cape Town - in miniature. I was shooting a lot of commercials and corporate videos and wanted to do something a little closer to my heart. Then I saw this video that a guy called Sam O'Hare shot of New York portraying it as a miniature city. I was blown away and thought 'well I can do an even better one of Cape Town!'. I spent about a month shooting in-between jobs and on my off days in the pristine Cape Town summer and I think that really adds to the colourful feel of the film. I have an immense love for Cape Town and even though I travel overseas every year I always get a little shiver down my spine when I catch a glimpse of the mountain through the aeroplane window. I wanted to create a video in honour of our Mother City.

Cape Town portrayed as a miniature city...what inspired you to do this?It is a style that I am seeing more and more often. There's even a little section in the latest BBC documentary 'Human Planet' that uses this style. When I saw that I said to myself 'I have to get my video out there before everyone else starts doing it'.

What difficulties did you have to deal with while shooting?The style requires shooting from high angles and the obvious challenge was: How do you get up onto all those buildings to get a load of different angles to make the film interesting? I sent out a mail to my contact list and everyone was very helpful in finding me access to rooftops and balconies all over the city. Then there were a few buildings that I really wanted to get onto and just lied to security and sneaked up onto the roof. I find the objects that work best are things like boats, helicopters and construction vehicles because they really give a sense of activity in a miniature world. There were still other buildings that I wanted to get access to that I just couldn't organise - for instance, the control tower at the airport. For some reason they think that a stranger with a camera might be a terrorist. Some miniature aeroplanes would have looked awesome, but there will always be more opportunities.

What was the highlight of your project?I really enjoyed shooting most of this project but the highlight was shooting in Clifton. I got access to some of the roofs of the beachfront apartments on one of the most beautiful days in summer. I got some really great shots there and that part of the film really showcases Cape Town‘s beauty with the still turquoise water and silky white sand. One of my favourite shots are the guys carrying the piano across the road, which happened by chance. I was on the roof of the Fugard Theatre and suddenly they started crossing the road. I had to really rush to frame my shot and get focus. But that's the beauty with a project like this - you shoot and shoot and wait and wait but then suddenly the most amazing things happen.

How long did the project take you?I shot it over the space of a month whenever I had spare time. It takes surprisingly long and a lot of patience to wait for the perfect moment like the dumpster tipping sand or waiting for the pirate ship to leave the Waterfront. I probably had about 300gigs of footage to sift through in the edit. As with all my projects, I also got to discover some new places in the city I've never been to. Editing took quite a while because I was really busy on other jobs. The editing process is quite laborious as you have to apply lots of filters to the clips and they take ages to render. So, Steve Jobs, if you feel like donating me a faster Mac please go right ahead.

Did you film it all yourself?I directed, produced, shot and edited everything. I filmed it on a Canon 5D, a little camera that's taking the industry by storm. I also have a motorized tripod head that I imported from Tokyo that basically allows the camera to pan really slowly so when the footage is sped up it looks smooth. It took a little time and experimentation to master the technique but I'll give you a short breakdown. I basically use a tilt shift lens effect to create a shallow depth of field, then boost the saturation a bit and speed up the footage. But it's not that simple. The real skill is getting the right angle on your subject and knowing how to frame it properly. I gave a sample track to Ross and Myles McDonald from Hey Papa Legend Studios and they produced an amazing soundtrack for me in exchange for a photoshoot. I think that's how all Cape Town creatives should work - through a skill exchange. Everyone would be producing much better content and not always complaining about how they don't have enough funds to do something.

What did you do the film for?I did it entirely for myself.

What's next?My goal is to make films like this in cities all over the world. Next month I'm traveling to Europe and UK and hope to create mini films of Berlin, London and Dublin.

The film has been selected as a finalist for the San Francisco International Festival of Short Films - what are your expectations?Yeah, how awesome is that! I actually had very few expectations when I entered it and then suddenly I got an email saying that I was a finalist out of over 1600 entries from all over the world. I'm not expecting too much though. I think that films that win festivals have evocative narratives that tell amazing and unique stories. I'm just happy to be one of the finalists and to have it screened in San Francisco. I've also entered it into short film competitions in UK and Germany so I'm holding thumbs.

Anything you would like to add?We are so lucky to live in such an amazingly beautiful city and it makes filming easier when your subject is just so hot!

By Antonia Heil

Find more creative Cape Town stories in our section arts & culture.
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Source: http://www.capetownmagazine.com/interviews/Timmy-Henny-captures-Cape-Town-as-legoland/146_22_18256

On Suburban Segregation (cross-posted)

Not necessary reading material (because it's just an infograph), but something worth looking at to prove that I'm not entirely insane: Suburbanization of Poverty 

Wet and cold (at least I was), we headed home from last Monday night's Bronco game via public transportation. Mike and I found ourselves at Colfax and Broadway at half past midnight, seated on a wet and cold park bench.

That bus stop is always busy, and half past midnight on an early Tuesday morning is no different. As we sat, people surrounded us, all talking about the game. But what caught my attention was the fact that they hadn't gone to the game as spectators, they had gone as employees. Kettle corn, beer, other food-service.
The commonality was football statistics; the man behind me knows more about football than I ever will; the crazy man pacing knows much less.

I felt guilty, shamed by my spectator-status as they discussed what had gone on behind the scenes and counted out their tips. One guy had a fistful of one-dollar bills. I was tempted to tell him to shove them back in his pocket, lest someone steal them. (Cape Town really got that in my brain. Last Saturday when I was out, I found that I had stashed $42 in my bra, just in case.)

The bus was not coming. I was grumpy.

I listened to the girl a few seats down start talking about where she was staying (Mississippi and Sable) and how long it was going to take her to get home (forever) - but then I got the impression that she was still in high school. And possibly homeless.
The guy next to her was also headed out to Aurora.

To my great relief, the bus finally came and we squished on. (For the record, people in Denver have no idea what a crowded bus is - they were balking at the prospect of having to move back and squeeze in, claiming that the bus was "full." Not full at all, but I wasn't in the mood to get stern.)

As the bus lumbered up Colfax, it stopped at nearly every stop to add more people. You'd think, perhaps, that as the bus left the city center, it would slowly empty rather than filling. No. It seemed that everyone was headed east. What's east? First of all, the Colorado Blvd connection (and the #40 bus), but second, and more importantly, Aurora.

Whenever I bemoan my situation (as I so love to do), I'm absolutely overlooking the fact that I have a support system. That I have transportation, that I have Simon.

I'm overlooking the fact that, like the girl seated a few seats away, there are varying degrees of homelessness in our city. Not everyone who's technically homeless has a cardboard sign and wants your money. They're sleeping on people's couches; they're crashing at a friend's place; they're staying awake all night; they're riding the bus around until they get somewhere. That's how people manage not to freeze during winters in Chicago - they ride the train until the end of the line and then turn around and do it all over again.

I'm overlooking the fact that I don't have an hour-long commute each way. I don't have to be dependent on the bus, something that can add hours to any commute, anywhere. I don't have to get on the bus with my arms loaded with groceries.

Unlike the woman with at least three, possibly four, kids and two strollers, I don't have to rely on the kindness of others to get my family safely off the bus. The kids reminded us of the township creches. They were cute, polite, but desperately needed clean clothes and baths. And a decent bedtime.

In Cape Town, the suburbs hold populations that fall into varying classifications of income levels, from the rich (Camps Bay) to the poor (Steenberg) to the poorer (Lavender Hill) to the townships (Vrygrond) to the informal settlements (Village Heights). As you go further down the income ladder, you find that the population density increases exponentially, as does the crime rate. But what falls at an equal rate is access to transportation.

Poorer neighborhoods are further from access to trains. Instead, they have to take a minibus from their neighborhood, probably to another minibus, then eventually to the train. This adds to their commute and can be a determining factor in their employment status.

Vrygrond was strategically placed away from train lines. The white Cape Townians didn't want the colored and black populations to have access to the transportation, but instead, wanted them to remain in their designated neighborhoods.

Minibuses, the other transportation alternative to trains, are dangerous. I've never been so harassed as I was on the trains and minibuses in Cape Town. It's the touching that really gets you. You're either about to be groped or robbed, and neither are pleasant. But people have to do that every day. Sitting on top of strangers, next to strangers, pushed up against them.

It's funny because just as the transportation effectively cuts off the poorest, it also secludes the richest. You can't take public transportation to Camps Bay, the wealthy, white side of Table Mountain. You have to take a cab.

In Cape Town, when I was finding jobs for the unemployed, many of the ads stipulated that people be from certain areas only. For a country that has come so far from Apartheid, it's disheartening to see such blatant discrimination.

Is that what we want here? A segregated workforce? But more importantly than that, is that what we're eventually going to have? Are we becoming a more diverse population or a more segregated one as time passes?

As someone who usually has access to transportation, it's a wake-up call to realize how much your life can be affected by the inability to commute. Mobility is a key to success. By continuing to eliminate entire populations of workers by simply making it difficult for them to access transportation, we're effectively ensuring that only a select portion of people will be able to apply for, and eventually obtain, those jobs.

On (Young) Love

Mike and I have been talking about the theory of impermanence a lot lately. It's one of the three basic facts of existence in Buddhism.


This is what's read at funerals:


Impermanent are all component things,
They arise and cease, that is their nature:
They come into being and pass away,
Release from them is bliss supreme.


Mike and I were talking last night about how you can either take solace in the fact that things are constantly changing or you can be afraid. (You guys probably know what side I'm on - I hate change. It's something I struggle to adapt to constantly. I will conquer it, dammit!)


Anyway, as usual, my love life is in a strange place. I'm one of those people who sees love as the true path of life - that any beautiful life is best lived filled with love. If I were to die today, I would be entirely satisfied with the loves that I have had: great friendships, family, men.


But oh, men. They are my supreme weakness. I can hear Mike's voice in my head now, "What would the Dalai Lama say?" He also told me that I've never let a man truly love me. I argue with him. I believe that I've never truly found that simultaneous love. (Remind me to someday blog about his theory about "wives" and "woo-hoos" - it's good, true, and absolutely hilarious.)


Anyway, the point of this story is the beautiful love I experienced in Cape Town.


James and I didn't last the entirety of the trip - I'm much too skeptical for that to have happened.


We met at a pool hall. I was drunk (always), and danced with him, and told him to call me.


He later told me he never would have called me had I not been so insistent because he wasn't sure I was serious.


He thought I lived in the Steenberg Estates (the nice white part) rather than Steenberg (Mama P's house and my temporary and oh-so-beloved home), so he was late to pick me up for our first date. We went out to dinner, where he fed me delicious chocolate cake and we closed the restaurant.


He was a romantic in ways I've never been treated to. There were hot bubble baths drawn for me, candlelit dinners, tea brought to me every morning, lunch packed for me most days, adventures.


He also drove me nuts, but that was to be expected. Even though I do believe that every love affair should be entered into wholeheartedly, it should also be cautiously done - it's a weird thing I have. All of a sudden, I get uncomfortable, oppressed, claustrophobic. And that's when I bail.


He took me to one of my favorite places in Cape Town, the Bridge to Nowhere, as I call it. It's in Tokai, right down the road from where he lived. That hill is where he told me he loved me and where I didn't lie to him.


I do love that bridge though.


We've kept in contact since, and today, in response to a message from me, he sent me this:


"Hey love! It's not very long into a week when i find myself thinking of you. How we could chat endlessly about anything, from an incredible intellectual understanding...
You're a seriously rad girl, katie barry....
Hope life is broadening that beautiful mind of yours. Also hope that i see you again, sooner rather than later"




I teared up at work, no lie.


It was never meant to be permanent. It was meant to happen and then burst up into flames, full of heated conversations and sighs. It was exactly what it should have been.


Many of my most wonderful Cape Town memories surround that: nights of free pool at Lizard's (still a weird name for a bar), driving down the M5 at night - turning off the lights right before we crested that hill, watching reruns of Scrubs on the couch when I wasn't at work...


I love the gift of love.


Whatever godlike being lives in the sky or in our hearts or wherever was seriously onto something. 


This impermanence thing, though, we'll have to work on. (Although that, too, can be a godsend.) 


;-) 

Quick memories. A "note to self" sort of post.

South Africa haunts my dreams.
Cape Town calls to me softly in the night.
I see my neighborhood vividly, afraid to lose the precious memories of spring there.
The train station near my house, the bricks that made up the small waiting house, the steps, the shop, Military Rd.
The "Free Palestine" mirror coverings on the Toyota parked at that house that always seemed to be in the process of being renovated.

The sounds, the smells, the memories live somewhere in my mind and as though they've died, I'm afraid to lose them.

Table Mountain, the view from the end of  24 Powell Road.

I don't want to let them slip away.

Violence in South Africa

New York Times article about the beating death of a man in the Gauteng Province.

I am currently reading a crime novel set in Jo'burg and it's shocking to me how much of the global perceptions about South Africa pertain to the violence there.

More on this to come. But if you've got the time, please read the article linked above.

The Wine Article - Cape Chameleon

Also, I've been published!
This month's issue of the Cape Chameleon includes my building article!
I'll be sure to scan it and post it once the magazine arrives in the mail!