Director Carla Fonseca Mokgata and her partner Nthato Mokgata discuss the challenges of filmmaking while welcoming a newborn baby. They recount the demanding production schedule of their romantic comedy, shot during Fonseca's pregnancy, and the realities of juggling motherhood with such a demanding creative process.
Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.We are in a Bryanston, Joburg, coffee shop called Conversations for a chat with Carla Fonseca Mokgata and Nthato Mokgata.
Mom is a multi-disciplinary artist — director, writer, actress and musician — and Dad is better known under his musical nom de plume, Spoek Mathambo, globally recognised for his genre-fluid and innovative township tech, as well as his animation and documentary films. Wolflight — two South African producers, Roelof Storm and Hannes Otto, and their American partner Will Seefried — invited Fonseca and Mokgata to pitch this romantic comedy, with the skeleton of the story already there.
“For it to be entrenched in South African pop culture, but also to work on different levels of form and subversion. And, yeah, just different ideas that we wanted to tease out and to play with the form.”“South African rom-com is in a shit place,” says Mokgata firmly.“And it doesn’t have to be,” continues Mokgata.“So, I think it was within parameters to see how to break that mould,” Mokgata adds.
“Everyone needs to understand funny,” adds Mokgata. “Even the straight man needs to know what funny is.” “There’s a level of expertise and skill in particular areas,” he says. “Like Carla from her stage directing. As far as how to go there: subtext, depth of emotion, subtlety.“Yeah, the way we split it was that I would communicate,” she adds, “with the actors and really do the blocking. You know that character moves from here to here. This is how we’re going to design it.”
“Written, directed, produced, edited, by us,” she says with a smile. “Too many hats — I acted in it as well.”“They have more cinemas than they have churches,” says Fonseca. “It’s just incredible. You walk around the corner and there’s a cinema. “And then, shortly after that, Ntatho asked me to come to the studio. I thought I was just going to watch him play music. But then I was given a mic.”
“And then there’s the feminist side,” Fonseca says, “We have some songs that speak about the woman’s body and that it’s not a property. I mean, girls would go crazy.”“What is it like? Because we’re still working together. We released something last week.”
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