Alive in Joburg

Good blend of CGI and journalism type hand-cam stuff. Most of the things we see look realistic, except the aliens themselves, since makeup is still very expensive compared to CGI. Seeing Independence Day style ships hover over Johannesburg was probably the coolest part.

In terms of plot feels very short and a little rushed, but nevertheless shows some promise for Neil as a special effects guy and possibly a director. The movie is an obvious jab at apartheid and the irony in humanity. Various black people who not two decades ago where themselves oppressed react with fear and suspicion towards the aliens.

It's available on the Internet, so you should check it out. It will be interesting to see what Neil can do with larger projects.

It is easy to see Neill Blomkamp's directorial skills in this short film, which runs kind of like a news broadcast documentary that gives a peek into the frightening situation in a South African town after some not so pleasant aliens have set up permanent residence there. It is a kind of journalistically objective look at how the lives of the local townspeople have been altered, mostly for the worse, by the arrival of the aliens. Visually, it is a stunningly effective film, especially with the mother ships floating just over the skyline, and the film is packed with one unsettling image after another. Having been signed on by Peter Jackson to film the highly anticipated screen adaptation of the wildly popular video game Halo, it is easy to see from this film why he was chosen despite having almost no directing experience at all to take on what will surely be a hugely popular film.

This impressive short takes a documentary form, but it's definitely no Christopher Guest style mockumentary. Instead it's got aliens—really realistic looking ones, with mech-style "bio-suits". Set in an imaginary South Africa where aliens have landed and taken up residence, Alive in Joburg poses as a documentary intent on examining how life has changed for residents there, interchanging interviews with realistic CG. The visuals are excellent and while the film's attempt to equate the aliens reception by locals with South Africa's Apartheid era are somewhat transparent, any attempt at social metaphor earns kudos from me.

The director, Neill Blomkamp, is celebrated for his advertising work, and won for himself— based largely on this short I would presume—the directing gig for the new Halo film. I must say, based on this film, it looks like a truly inspired choice.

Check out all of our weekly reviews at ShortoftheWeek.com

It doesn't happen every day that an aspiring filmmaker is offered the chance to direct a big Hollywood project on the basis of a six-minute science fiction short. And yet that's what happened to South African director Neill Blomkamp, whom Peter Jackson chose for the subsequently abandoned Halo project after viewing a DVD of Alive in Joburg. It's easy to see what caught the Lord of the Rings director's eye: few shorts boast such ambition and originality.

Set and filmed in Johannesburg, also known as Joburg locally, the story is that of the population's encounter with an alien race. Naturally, the ETs are viewed as hostile invaders that have to be dealt with quickly and without mercy. Conflict is inevitable.

So far, so predictable. What, then, makes Alive in Joburg such an inspired achievement? The fact that most of it doesn't look like sci-fi at all, but rather newsreel footage of something more troubling than an alien invasion: racial conflict. Before the ETs are unveiled, Blomkamp's documentary approach has us believe that the interviewees are referring to human immigrants, not alien ones. Thus science fiction's ability to act as a metaphor is masterfully employed to establish parallels between a fictional close encounter and real-life ethnic struggles, with the unusual setting (for an SF story, that is) heightening the frightening sense of reality.

If one has to find a flaw in Blomkamp's gritty, hand-held examination of racism with an otherworldly twist, it would be the fact that the film is - no pun intended - too short, more premise than proper story. However, considering Blomkamp's ambitions must have been justifiably narrow at the time, such a misstep is easily forgivable, even more so with hindsight: with the Halo film shelved, the director was given a chance to expand on his original idea. And so the excellent District 9 was born...

What an amazing short movie. As other reviewers have stated, the movie does manage to convey a feeling of racism not between humans but the racism that occurs towards these squid-like aliens. It was a very real and effective message that creates a metaphor that sometimes only fantasy can convey.

This short has gained attention recently because the director was chosen by Peter Jackson to direct the movie adaptation of "Halo". For those of you unfamiliar with the game, this is the perfect man for the job.

For those of you looking for this movie, it can be easily found on Video.Google.Com