Land Of Thirst
An historical romance set in the Karoo in 1913, Land of Thirst is an extraordinary love story about two people far ahead of their time, caught in the crosscurrents of emergent South Africa. Margaret leaves England and moves to Africa for the treatment of her tuberculosis in the dry air of the Karoo, while Khanyiso goes there to search for his African roots. Romance flourishes for them in this “land of thirst” – but can they keep their love alive in such a hostile world?
Margaret and Khanyiso independently leave England and travel to South Africa. The consumptive Margaret seeks treatment at a sanatorium. Khanyiso is the son of a Xhosa chief executed by the British twenty years earlier who was taken to London as a child, raised as an English gentleman and given a medical training. He is returning home to unearth what happened to his father – and to serve his people as a doctor.
Margaret and Khanyiso both feel alienated in the deeply parochial society of the Karoo. The decrepit sanatorium where Margaret is being treated is run by an alcoholic doctor and his mean-spirited wife, while Khanyiso must stay in a brothel after being shunned by the racist proprietors of every guesthouse in town. Khanyiso and Margaret meet through a shy teenager named Paul – a naïve farm boy who latches onto both of them as his only friends. Khanyiso and Margaret find in each other refuge from the harsh world of the Karoo, and fall passionately in love. But their love puts both their lives at risk.
Background Information
The SABC TV 2 mini-series and film, Land of Thirst, is an adaptation of a little-known South African novel, an historical romance set in the Karoo in 1913. It is not that often that you get a “period piece” featuring our national heritage on TV or film in our country, and Land of Thirst is an extraordinary love story about two people far ahead of their time, caught in the crosscurrents of emergent South Africa, on the eve of the passage of the infamous Natives Land Act. The main character, Khanyiso Phalo, is played by top South African actor Hlomla Dandala and the female lead, Margaret Harding, is played by Nina Lucy Wylde, a South African actress who has been working in the UK.
The director is Cape Town based Meg Rickards, who developed this project at the Binger Film Lab in Amsterdam, Holland. Julie Frederikse and Madoda Ncayiyana, directors of the Durban-based production house, Vuleka Productions are the producers for SABC TV-2, working with Commissioning Editor Anne Davis.
The music of Land of Thirst is by the musician and composer, Neo Muyanga, who has ensured that strong African themes dominate the film’s ethos, while also capturing the flavour of both the Xhosa people and the unusual African landscape of the arid Karoo. The title of the production, Land of Thirst, is inspired by a translation from the original San words for the desert-like setting of the drama.
Land of Thirst was shot on location in Matjiesfontein, the Ochre Trail, Hex River Valley and Clara Anna Fontein.
What the media is saying about Vuleka
The production is a triumph... Land of Thirst breaks the mould for its genre by avoiding the spectacle so typical of period pieces. The film is shot in high-definition format with a lot of hand-held camera work that gives it a modern feel. Its intimacy also means that you get a closer look at the quality of the acting. Wylde, for example, sparkles as a TB patient... Race, as usual, features strongly in this tale, which takes place against the backdrop of the Native Land Act of 1913.
"I don't think it is a story about race," argues director Meg Rickards. "It is a story about two people searching for wholeness. We set out to tell a story about South Africa in 1913. A generation has passed since the Immorality Act and race has not yet become a non-issue."
Land of Thirst was recently licensed to an English distribution company.
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