episodes during the making of the film by sound recordist/running cameraman Teo Bielefeld The Toyota Land Cruiser slams to a stop and heaves to one side. We have just rammed into an aardvark hole at high speed out in the vast sandveld of the central Kalahari. I jump from the vehicle with my miniature digital camera and begin to sprint away as fast as I can. This is no great escape; this is race day. I hear the voice of my Olympic coach roll through my head. I am a rower that placed fourth in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Even training for ten years in the eight man shell could not prepare me for frying on the searing 120 degree sands of south-central Botswana. This is a run to the death. I have to catch up to Karoha, a !Xwikwe San hunter. He is running after a herd of kudu antelope on foot and at a full tilt. Karoha calls this hunt the "chasing hunt". It is the most difficult hunt, also possibly one of the oldest forms of hunting - a hunt from before man had developed more sophisticated projectile weapons like bow and arrow or the spear thrower. The hunter must wait until the hottest time of the day. The high temperature helps exhaust the animal. The hunter must also have the astounding ability to track his quarry at a sustained pace - at times sprinting - over uneven ground until "the blood of the animal boils before his own". Now that the chase vehicle is temporarily out of commission, I am the last hope for the film crew. It has taken us three weeks to find the perfect situation to film the chasing hunt. Several film crews have attempted and failed to capture this moment. I have a chance to video something that has never been seen on film. I leap from the vehicle so quickly; it's only after several hundred yards that I make a mental note of my gear: a GPS, spare batteries and tapes and the most important element - the liter and a half of water in my camel back. I can drink the water from a hose that comes around and attaches to a strap at my front. Unfortunately the water inside is hot enough to make tea. I have been consuming two and a half gallons on a normal day, and this is not a normal day. As I begin to chase after Karoha I think, "some one could die here today and it could be me. This could be a run to my death". We are sixty miles from camp and the only road. I could die of exposure if I fall behind the Bushmen hunters and the herd of kudu. There are only a handful of people who can track at a full run, and one of them is out in front of me quickly becoming a blurred speck on the horizon moving fast among the low lying shrub. It is hot enough to curl the green leaves on the trees into the talons of an eagle. I am drenched in sweat and even my Olympic conditioning is not working for me. My fateful thoughts turn into a mantra. "I could die out here; ... I could die out here", runs over and over in my head. As I try my best to follow Karoha, my mind fills with disaster scenarios: "what if I am bitten by a Puff Adder, one of Africa's most venomous snakes". The puff adders' three-colored chevron pattern makes them virtually invisible in the sand. Instead I feel a more familiar bite numbing my legs like venom - the dreaded lactic acid build up in my muscles. A feeling I know well as an athlete. It happens when the workload is too great for the oxygen delivery system. I realize I had no proper warm up unless you count the seven hours of kidney jolting bumps and lurching dodges from the deadly "Haak en Steek" thorn trees on the jeep. "Haak en Steek" translates into "hook and stab" in Afrikaans, and they mean it. I may bleed to death long before snakes or sun get me, from lacerations along my arms, back and legs. After the Olympics, I returned home to Santa Fe, New Mexico to pursue my career in film and art. It was there working on the film "Blessed", with actor Val Kilmer, that I first met Craig Foster, film cameraman and director. Now I am working with his South African production company, Earthrise, for two months in the desert. We are making a documentary on the San of the Kalahari and their unique relationship with their environment. The film titled, "The Great Dance - a hunter's story", will be released in a cinema in New York in late September, and through Ster-Kinekor in South Africa in late October. The film has already won a nomination as a finalist at Wildscreen, in Bristol, United Kingdom - the world's largest film festival of natural history films and television. Out of 420 films from 40 countries it has been selected in the top 10 % and is now in the running for a Panda Award. The !Xo and /Xwikwe San of the central Kalahari have been part of the vast desert landscape since ancient times. !Nqate is one of them; this is his story, in his own words. Together with his friends Karoha and Xlhoase, they hunt as their ancestors have for thousands of years. "We are San Bushmen, sons and daughters of the First people", he explains. "We know hunting. This is what we were born to do." Through their eyes we perceive a world invisible to outsiders. The subtlest signs are imperceptible to the untrained eye, but they are enough to lead !Nqate to his prey. Tracks in the sand are only the beginning - the skills of the San hunter are virtually a sixth sense, a complex bond between man and animal. Karoha is disappearing. He is moving into that hyperspace and appears to slowly pull away from me in a warping wave of stars curling into tunnel vision. I can't believe it. I am an Olympian pacing six-minute miles and he is pulling away from me and he does not even have shoes to protect his feet from the searing hot sand. There is no sound of the vehicle coming to rescue me. No sound but my personal motivational mantra: "I could die out here", and the sound of my own labored breathing. Suddenly, I hear the song of the desert. The chirping and purring of the birds, and the murmur of insects. My principle role in this production is to be the sound recordist. Most of my days here in the Kalahari I spend wearing black heat absorbing earphones listening to nature's song. For me the sounds of the desert are like a beautiful concert with each hour of the day being a different track. All the instruments of God working together perfectly at each moment of the day and night. Each bird staking claim to its ground and interacting with the insects and the other birds and animals all in divine order. It is an extremely profound experience and brings me back into the race. From deep inside I find that quiet inner place we go to as athletes - the place where everything is perfect. It is the second wind; it is the perfect race on Saturday. The place where my gold medal hangs. It is finding that parking place right in front of where you want to be. And I find it. Slowly my lungs open to the blast furnace of the Kalahari air and I begin to visualize my lungs receiving oxygen instead of ramming them full of hot air that singes the delicate alveoli inside. I dance across the desert on my toes instead of digging my heels deep in the sizzling sand. I put the camera away and just begin to focus on the running, not on the filming. I am alive. I am riding high on the tsunami endorphin wave. I am alive for the first time in three weeks. Slowly gaining on Karoha, I dance through the thorn bushes, to the Kalahari wildlife sonata. At last I catch up with Karoha and run behind him studying the movement of his slight body and how little he sweats. In his presence I am humbled again. He drank very little of the liter of water he carries in three hours of running. I realize that next to him, I am a lumbering giant with the grace of a rhinoceros. The way the San people move is at the core of all martial arts. A quiet centered place from which to survive. I bring out my camera and try to capture his mastery and economy of movement. I think back to the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. When I was inundated with the largest production that I will ever have the merit to crew on. The megalithic Olympic Show seemed so far removed from the simple heroic spirit on the Peloponnese in Greece long ago. The Olympic parallels to ancient man are undeniable. The marathon, the javelin, and the bow, they are all children born of survival. This day we are not racing for the gold or for the laurel. We are racing for the most fundamental need. We were racing to the death for food. This race is the true origin of the heroic Olympic marathon. The San have been dancing the great dance on the mother continent centuries before anyone migrated to the Mediterranean. Filming the quiet moving peace of Karoha's running, I notice that we are chasing only one animal now. I hear the low rumble of the Land Cruiser closing in on us. I look up to finally see the vehicle, and stare in disbelief, like a castaway at sea might look at a rescue ship. I want to keep running. I just found the zone, but I also know that I need to be fresh in case of another mishap with the vehicle. I climb aboard wide eyed, drenched in sweat and shaking. We follow Karoha and the kudu for another hour. Glad for the safety of the vehicle, I wonder if I could have continued in that heat, it is something I often think about and yet will never know. As Karoha runs into the fourth hour of this marathon, for the first time we see the man and the animal together several times. Karoha's persistence is definitely tiring the kudu. We see a giant owl spread its wings and take flight. As the keeper of the other world beats at the air with its magnificent wings, I feel a chill, like the sun going behind the clouds. Everything is moving in slow motion now. The kudu walks in the sand and I see each frame as her eyes go tame. Damon Foster slides off the moving vehicle in slow motion. He looks like a pirate storming the beach, with his three week bristle and his once white, long sleeve shirt now stained black and shredded from being clawed at by the thorns. He raises his camera like a musket in one hand and charges after Karoha filming the final moments of the hunt. The moment of awkward beauty is upon us. To see the kudu's legs stiffen up brings tears of precious moisture to my eyes. I feel a sense of awe, as a filmmaker for the gift of being part of the only crew who has been able to film the chasing hunt in its entirety. In some way I feel that our presence is not quite right here in this ancient arena between man and animal, like the presence of Paparazzi swarming at the death of a princess. The kudu remains motionless, except for the blinking of her long eyelashes. She is staring into the eyes of Karoha. "Who is this man?" she seems to be asking. The vehicle stops and Craig Foster moves in with his professional digital camera, his long blond hair slowly lifting and falling around his shoulders as he closes the gap with giant strides. Karoha raises his spear and drives it to the place where his great-great-grandfathers placed it. Into the heart of Africa. Karoha connects to the place of ancestral knowledge just as the first people did so long ago. The kudu stands fearless and accepts the spear. As if she knows how important her life and now her death is in this sacred way, for the survival of the San people. No one speaks. Everyone's limits are pushed beyond exhaustion. The mild irritation of working with each other finally has festered enough to yield a pearl and there is nothing more to say. We are witnessing greatness. We load the kudu into the metal cage made of 14 gauge steel mesh that surrounds the bed of the vehicle. This is standard issue on custom vehicles bound for the deep bush. It offers only a moderate level of protection from thieves. Only two people were able to ride in the cab of the vehicle. The four San, Damon and I take our places on top of the cage and head back for camp. We drive off into the sunset's strange yellow glow. The saffron light is crushed by swirling inky storm clouds descending. On three sides comes the Jackal lightning. Fingers of purple current streaking across the sky. Giant bolts crash to the ground, melting the sand into glass. As far as I could see our vehicle crammed with people, is the tallest object on this desert landscape. We still have fifty miles till camp. No one says a word until we run out of gas. On top of the Land Cruiser's cage runs a row of ten steel cans each containing five gallons of fuel. Even though we feed two cans into the tank the engine still will not start. Taking the crud rich dregs from one of the cans, we pour it directly into the carburetor, which immediately fouls it and renders it useless. The driver and Damon are furiously working to take apart the carb, clean and rebuild it. I have seen amazing feats of mechanical skill on this trip. Including the expedient repair of twenty-seven flat tires, transmission linkage replacement, and the repair of fuel lines that were shredded from crashing through trees. I have confidence in the crew's ability to repair the problem, but I am doubtful they can do it in such adverse conditions. It is now the dead of night, strobed by crashing lightning all around us. The winds now gust forty miles per hour and kick up sand in my eyes. It is too much for me. Indicating the degree of my resignation, I climb up on top of the remaining fuel cans and lay there waiting for the final bolt to end my puny little life in a blaze of glory. Meanwhile Craig Foster is running around as if he's on fire. He is ablaze like a knight in battle. Wielding not broadsword but camera, asking the San to stand in front of dense pockets of electric activity, capturing ghostly human silhouettes against the night sky, and catching some of the most powerful images I have ever seen on the screen. I notice that the lightning ignites a veldt fire in the distance. The desert is covered in long dry grasses, and now it is ablaze and heading straight for us traveling at the speed of the wind. I close my eyes longing for my sleeping bag. Tall plumes of smoke tower into the night sky illuminated by the fierce blaze below. I look down off my steel burial mound and see light painting the sand. Could it be the fire already upon us? It is the entire crew searching with flashlights for a spring the size of a pencil eraser that popped off the carburetor during the disassembly. I close my eyes again. I wake to bodies climbing over me and the deafening sound of thunder rolling continuously in the darkness. No, it's the sound of the engine revving at full throttle. The motor is racing and we pounce to a start and drive twenty feet. The engine sputters, coughs and lurches to a stop. The driver redlines the engine again and blasts out of the blocks only to sputter and falter again. We drive about three miles lurching through the night before the final crud clears from the carb and we run smoothly. We follow our own tire tracks, from the morning, back to camp. I turn on my GPS only to be greeted with a low battery warning. Our route is going to take us twenty or so miles out of the direct route home. I take a deep breath knowing that my cache of batteries is at camp. I delicately propose that we alter our course. I am in such awe of the !Nqate's navigational capabilities that I do not want to offend him. The San have the most highly developed sense of direction that I have ever witnessed. They always know where they are even with no landmarks on a perfectly flat landscape. I would often test their direction and distance calculations against the GPS and they are deadly accurate. !Nqate agrees that we should use the machine as he puts it, and we veer sharply south. Together !Nqate and I pick a star to navigate by. I shut off the GPS to conserve the battery power. !Nqate weaves a course through the desert's bushes and trees, guiding the driver with his long stick. We travel like this until a band of roving clouds obscures the star. I turn on the GPS again and we adjust our course. We sit side by side on top of the gas cans and weave our way home. It is by melding the navigation methods of the First people with the tools of the modern world that we make our way through the cool desert's early dawn. At this moment, one method will not work alone. We have no compass and scant battery power. !Nqate does not have a clear view of the stars. This single moment is my metaphor for the twenty-first century. The First people have insights into ways of living and ways of conservation that we can not see with our computer programs, satellites and PhDs. There are tools that we can give our more primitive brothers to help them live in these changing times. Neither culture can survive alone. It is a combination of the wisdom of the First people and the technology of the modern world that is essential for the survival of everyone.

Making of the Movie- Overview

 

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