Alive in Joburg

This impressive short takes a documentary form, but it's definitely no Christopher Guest style mockumentary. Instead it's got aliens—really realistic looking ones, with mech-style "bio-suits". Set in an imaginary South Africa where aliens have landed and taken up residence, Alive in Joburg poses as a documentary intent on examining how life has changed for residents there, interchanging interviews with realistic CG. The visuals are excellent and while the film's attempt to equate the aliens reception by locals with South Africa's Apartheid era are somewhat transparent, any attempt at social metaphor earns kudos from me.

The director, Neill Blomkamp, is celebrated for his advertising work, and won for himself— based largely on this short I would presume—the directing gig for the new Halo film. I must say, based on this film, it looks like a truly inspired choice.

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It is easy to see Neill Blomkamp's directorial skills in this short film, which runs kind of like a news broadcast documentary that gives a peek into the frightening situation in a South African town after some not so pleasant aliens have set up permanent residence there. It is a kind of journalistically objective look at how the lives of the local townspeople have been altered, mostly for the worse, by the arrival of the aliens. Visually, it is a stunningly effective film, especially with the mother ships floating just over the skyline, and the film is packed with one unsettling image after another. Having been signed on by Peter Jackson to film the highly anticipated screen adaptation of the wildly popular video game Halo, it is easy to see from this film why he was chosen despite having almost no directing experience at all to take on what will surely be a hugely popular film.

"We don't want to be here, this place doesn't want us... we have nothing, nothing."

I feel like Neil Blomkamp has been receiving a lot of criticism lately for Elysium and Chappie, but there is no doubt in my mind that much of that has to do with how much expectations we put on him after delivering one of the better sci-fi pics of the decade, District 9. His style hasn't changed much, but of course the social commentary from that film hasn't had the same impact in his most recent films. In 2005 Blomkamp made an interesting short that would later be the basis for his feature film District 9. In Alive in Joburg he already had the social commentary of the story worked out through this documentary style film making and even had Sharlto Copley play a small role in a film he would later star in (and which would change his career). The social commentary here is just as sharp as in District 9, and Neil actually incorporated interviews of many South Africans referring to Zimbabwean refugees in real life which in the short are made to be referring to the aliens that have invaded Johannesburg. It is a clear metaphor of racism and division of social classes (referring to South Africa's Apartheid era). It's also impressive to see some of the special effects here, which look great for a film shot on such a low budget. So impressive that it caught Peter Jackson's attention at the time who wanted Neil to direct the screenplay adaptation of Halo, but the project was later shelved. I'm glad Blomkamp was given the funds to expand this small film into a full feature length movie, because it turned out to be one of the best sci-fi movies of the decade: District 9.

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Good blend of CGI and journalism type hand-cam stuff. Most of the things we see look realistic, except the aliens themselves, since makeup is still very expensive compared to CGI. Seeing Independence Day style ships hover over Johannesburg was probably the coolest part.

In terms of plot feels very short and a little rushed, but nevertheless shows some promise for Neil as a special effects guy and possibly a director. The movie is an obvious jab at apartheid and the irony in humanity. Various black people who not two decades ago where themselves oppressed react with fear and suspicion towards the aliens.

It's available on the Internet, so you should check it out. It will be interesting to see what Neil can do with larger projects.

It doesn't happen every day that an aspiring filmmaker is offered the chance to direct a big Hollywood project on the basis of a six-minute science fiction short. And yet that's what happened to South African director Neill Blomkamp, whom Peter Jackson chose for the subsequently abandoned Halo project after viewing a DVD of Alive in Joburg. It's easy to see what caught the Lord of the Rings director's eye: few shorts boast such ambition and originality.

Set and filmed in Johannesburg, also known as Joburg locally, the story is that of the population's encounter with an alien race. Naturally, the ETs are viewed as hostile invaders that have to be dealt with quickly and without mercy. Conflict is inevitable.

So far, so predictable. What, then, makes Alive in Joburg such an inspired achievement? The fact that most of it doesn't look like sci-fi at all, but rather newsreel footage of something more troubling than an alien invasion: racial conflict. Before the ETs are unveiled, Blomkamp's documentary approach has us believe that the interviewees are referring to human immigrants, not alien ones. Thus science fiction's ability to act as a metaphor is masterfully employed to establish parallels between a fictional close encounter and real-life ethnic struggles, with the unusual setting (for an SF story, that is) heightening the frightening sense of reality.

If one has to find a flaw in Blomkamp's gritty, hand-held examination of racism with an otherworldly twist, it would be the fact that the film is - no pun intended - too short, more premise than proper story. However, considering Blomkamp's ambitions must have been justifiably narrow at the time, such a misstep is easily forgivable, even more so with hindsight: with the Halo film shelved, the director was given a chance to expand on his original idea. And so the excellent District 9 was born...