BEAUTIFUL IN BEAUFORT-WES (2006) (53:47)

Beaufort West lies in the Great Karoo and most people regard it merely as the town you pass through on your way from Cape Town to Johannesburg. However, people do live there and one of them is the poet and singer Gert Vlok Nel (b. 1963). This documentary, shot in 2005, was made by a Dutch filmmaker and deals with Nel and a few of the kind of the people who feature so prominently in his work. Nel himself only speaks through his poems and ballads, but his father Albert, with whom he lives, is a little more communicative. Other individuals also comment – mostly on their own lives – and through them the film provides a perspective on what it is like to live there. None of those interviewed are prominent people, but it is their ordinariness and the evocative cinematography that convey a basic sadness that echoes the writer’s work. At the Netherlands Film Festival in 2006 the film was nominated for two Golden Calf awards, including the one for Best Short Documentary.