Kalyetisha – a township close to Cape Town after the apartheid. Two thirtheen year-old boys – Madiba and Sipho – play along a railway line. A train passed by.
A dead man is tossed from the train and rolls to their feet. His lifeless hand clutches a case where the boys find a gun with one bullet and a videocamera. While the cocky Shipo takes the gun, the introvert shy Madiba chooses the videocamera. Their destinies seem to be sealed.
Madiba creates a box made of wooden and hides his new toy in order to avoid uncomfortable questions and losing it. He starts filming his township and its inhabitants and through the lense he discovers a new strange beauty of his everday surroundings.
In the meantime Shipo experiments the gun, robs people and finally becomes the leader of a gang operating out of Capetown. Madiba follows his friend to Capetown. But instead of practising crime he is more interested in capturing the luxurious life in the capital of South Africa with his camera which is in contrast to the life in his township.
One day he meets Estelle, a white well-protected girl stealing a book in a bookstore which Madiba films by accident. A profound friendship starts developping between them – which seems to be endangered by her traditional father – a famous doctor belonging to the establishment where century-old prejudice have not died with the end of apartheid.
Are the destinies of Madiba and Shipo, who falls deeper and deeper into his criminal lifestyle already sealed by their findings from the railway line?
ZA, 2003, 105 min, Ntshavheni wa Luruli
Maisha Short: TITEL
TEXT
Time: 7:00pm
Entrance: Free