"A story is like the wind, it comes from a far-off quarter... I sit, merely listening, watching for a story which I want to hear, that it may float into my ear." (//Kabbo - Bleek and Lloyd, 1870s) Jeremy Evans paints the picture... "In the beginning was not the word, but the picture. Whilst this is not unusual for a writer of factual programs, what did prove unusual was the lengthy and detailed process by which the script was to be distilled out of a mass of transcripts, books, poems, and academic sources. The narration is, in fact, more like a radio play assembled from quotes made at different times by !Nqate, his companions or known explanations by other bushmen. In early 1999, I saw a tape from the first shoots. The images had immense power and beauty, but I felt at times it would be difficult for a Western audience to grasp what was occurring. I am a typical British viewer: I have scant experience of Africa; little knowledge of animals or hunting; none at all of tracking. I showed the pictures and a draft script to a friend, Rob Harrington, an award-winning editor and composer. He tossed the pages aside and watched in awe. I knew then we were in the presence of something special. The producer, Ellen flew me to her office in Amsterdam, where we went through the tape and noted down my comments on extra material needed to flesh out the film, to help urban viewers grasp the way animals made tracks. We had to find a clearer way to structure sequences to show what the hunters saw from the spoor. I also wrote fresh questions for the brothers to put to the San. Craig asked me to write the film in the first person. I was extremely reluctant to do so. If, even for one second, the audience ceases to believe that the main character is narrating the film, the overall effect is ruined. I had transcripts of everything !Nqate and the others had said the previous November and the replies to new questions after Craig and Damon's second trip in September 1999. They were already working with the contributors more closely than many filmmakers can afford in time or effort. We decided that I needed to go to South Africa to spend time in the offline edit suite - and for a crash course in bushman beliefs. I was able to repeatedly question them about events in the hunts and San lore. I had access to the little bushman literature that exists - chiefly the accounts written down by the linguist Wilhelm Bleek questioning the /Xam //Kabbo in the 1870s. I returned to Britain with a better idea, more questions and a stack of worthy tomes (eg. George B. Silberbauer, Hunter and Habitat in the Central Kalahari Desert, Cambridge University Press 1981 ISBN 0521 281350). After considerable delay, I wrote drafts throughout January and February of the next year. The process of writing mimicked the hunt itself. To capture !Nqate I had to know him and what he was thinking at any point. Not what I imagined he would be thinking, but what he or one of the others actually thought. He and his companions had taken the film seriously for the first time when they saw from a first assembly how accurately they were being portrayed. When the team took the risky, and again unusual, step of returning to the Kalahari to find them, the master-hunters were waiting for them, ready to give lengthy explanations of what they were doing and thinking. These later joint viewings of the rough and fine cuts allowed the narration to be based solidly on their words and thoughts. The film's structure (3 main hunts) and repeated speech ("women like meat"," taking without asking", "tracking is like dancing") mimic patterns in which the San explain or tell a story. The layers build up so that new meanings of the same phrase become possible. We had set ourselves some severe constraints. I could not introduce anything !Nqate did not know - eg. that this hunt had never been filmed before. As a result, I could not make comparisons with Western concepts - or use words like hospital, clock or degrees of heat, items that would be alien to him. In a parallel with the hunter and his prey, I felt I had to become !Nqate. Only when his heart beat in my heart would his words flow. But to reach the point of seeing through his eyes, following him through thickets of dialogue and thorny passages of translation proved long, mentally demanding and surprisingly arduous physically. I was kept on the right track by constant review of the drafts. Ellen and James read and commented. Craig saw where I was heading, guided me away from the worst pitfalls and marshalled helpful pointers from academics Tony Traill, Dr. Janette Deacon, and Megan Biesele. It was a very rewarding process, more dramatic in technique than most documentaries. I felt we had achieved something extraordinary when Sello, the actor who plays the voice of !Nqate in English, was overcome by emotion while recording. In the end, the words area luxury: if Amazon Indians can grasp the essence of the film without translation the force is in the images. But for most of us they are essential signposts in unfamiliar territory. A postscript: The darkest hour was to come - in the Spring of 2000. The production was officially over. After almost 3 years of effort, broke, exhausted physically and mentally, Craig, Damon and a tired composer prepared for some hard-earned rest. The music and narration had been put together with the onlined picture, and postproduction completed. When the finished film was sent to me, I felt a terrible shock. Usually at this point everything comes together. The shiny picture, smooth commentary and polished music lift the film onto another plane. Not so. It was diminished, reduced to an ordinary program. The whole had become less than the parts. Yet we knew that within the parts there was real power. Rapidly conferring with Ellen, I wrote notes for my colleagues in far-away Cape Town. Rob Harrington wrote detailed notes for the composer. It is a measure of how collaborative the working relationships were on this film, that having finished a marathon, Craig, Damon and Barry picked themselves up and ran the extra miles. It was a test of stamina that brings Karoha to mind, standing at the end with the kudu dead on her feet. But for their resilience and determination, we would not have the masterpiece you see today."

Interview with the Producer

 

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