A tribute to a friend

[Trevor]

I will be here www.innibos.co.za as from the 22nd September this year and aside from screening films at the "Bos Bioscope", I also have the pleasure of being able to honour a friend and mentor, Dirk de Villiers on the 24th September. I will have to do the honouring in Afrikaans as it is an Afrikaans festival but here is a translation of what I will say that night:

A tribute to Dirk de Villiers

I was a young, green film archivist at the National Film, Video and Sound Archives when I became acutely aware of the nature of the national treasure that we are the custodians of as archivists there. Films showing what Cape Town ~ and more specifically Adderley Street ~ looked like in 1898,  films from the Anglo Boer War, South Africa and Africa’s oldest surviving feature film, Harold Shaw’s De Voortrekkers, the longest running newsreel series, the African Mirror which commenced in 1913 and only ceased production in 1984. The latter newsreel supplied the SA public with their news in cinemas, due to the fact that television was banned.

The NFA started life as part of the National Film Board in 1964 and was then known as the SA Film Institute: when the NFB was shut down in 1979, the NFA continued with the NFB’s activities. Films dating back many years are here: from filmmakers such as Jamie Uys, Jans Rautenbach, David Millin, Emil Nofal, Ivan Hall, Pierre de Wet, Percival Rubens and also Dirk de Villiers, my friend and mentor. All of these are South African treasures, all and a lot more: parts of a century old film industry: clippings, stills, scripts, posters and hundreds of films: this is the core of the work that the NFB started and the NFA continues to do  ~ a proud sub-directorate of the DAC which preserves the nation’s film heritage.

I first got to know Uncle Dirk well when he arrived at the NFA to begin going through his films for possible transfer to a digital medium for inclusion in the newly formed MNet Film Library. Uncle Dirk ~ then Mr de Villiers to me ~ started chatting to me about his career and asked me if I had a favourite among his films, after hearing me talk about films such as Wild Season, Katrina, Shangani Patrol and Dr Kalie.

My answer was that Geheim Van Nantes was my favourite of his: after all, its’ not every SA film that begins with a swear word. On hearing this, he told me that Geheim van Nantes was an OK film, but what about My broer se bril? Had I seen that? In my innocence, I told him that I hadn’t seen his brother’s glasses anywhere around, but if he told me what they looked like, I would search for them. He stared at me for a few seconds and then burst out laughing, saying that he was actually referring to the film with Cobus Rossouw.

Not many people know that Uncle Dirk started his career as an actor beore he became a director, notably in the films Jy Is My Liefling and Die Wit Sluier wherein he portrayed Franz Marx’s supervisor and a doctor respectively. Even fewer people know that he was actually a traitor and a lowlife: he was the person that we can blame for the Kruger millions not being around today as he threw them into the Blyde River canyon in Ivan Hall’s 1967 film. Then, he was shot for his trouble by Carel Trichardt, causing the camera to topple over.

I always looked forward to Uncle Dirk’s frequent calls and I was also pleased when he was honoured at the 2007 Volksblad Art Festival and was made a Knight of the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival in 2008 for his contributions to the SA film industry. April 2008 was the last time that I saw Uncle Dirk…….and then the telephone calls dried up.

A few months after his passing, I was invited to Stellenbosch for a film screening and got hopelessly lost in search of the Spier Wine Estate. Ending up in Franschoek ~ way out of my way ~ I decided to head back to Stellenbosch to ask for directions. En route, I noticed two sign boards, one pointing to Zoete Inval and the other to Lavernier Estate: the two wine farms where Geheim Van Nantes was filmed. I said to myself: “Thanks, Uncle Dirk, you’ve put me on the right road again.”

Those words also apply to my other film mentors David Millin, Jans Rautenbach and Vincent Cox: your pioneering work in our film industry gave a shy and lonely child a hobby (and much later, a job). That job’s core function is to preserve the product of our hundred year old film industry and it is a task that my colleagues and I tackle with love and pride.

Thank you, Uncle Dirk.