Alive in Joburg

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

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...

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.

A documentary looking back a decade whenever aliens arrived in the already divided city of Johannesburg. The film shows the modern day enforcement action being taken against the inhabitants while also interviewing the original residents of the city as to why the tensions and divisions are only getting worse.

I cannot remember how I stumbled into this film but I suspect it was as a result of the buzz surrounding director Blomkamp and some of the projects he has been associated with of late. Set in South Africa the film is a strange mix of social commentary, sci-fi and special effects. So we get an impressive (for the budget) gunfight with a robotic-style alien combined with heavy linkages between the treatment of the aliens in the film and the treatment of blacks within South Africa. It is quite cleverly done but not as clever as some have suggested here. The metaphor is a good one but it is perhaps not as subtle as I would have liked and, even at 6 minutes long I still felt myself thinking "yeah, the aliens = black people, I get it". I am being a bit harsh on it of course and this "failing" (my words only) is not that big a deal.

Even if this aspect is a bit obvious, the "message" is not overly rammed down our throats but rather left hanging there. I would have liked it to ask its questions more obviously to the audience to force you beyond the simple message and make the audience question their own view on the aliens. Personally I did have a bit of a thought process about supporting the action against the aliens and I would have liked the film to guide me more down this bigoted path before pulling me back and confronting me with my own thoughts – as it is though the script is not smart enough to make that happen to the degree I would have liked.

Blomkamp's direction is good though and I did think that the budget was well used in the effects and the way they were delivered (the use of news style footage helped cover the limitations of the effects at some points). Overall then an interesting but perhaps too obvious film that delivers it message in a solid manner but didn't confront and challenge me as a viewer in the way that it could have done with more subtly and guile about it.

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.

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