SA teen makes the big Time list

Khomotso Manyaka in her role as Chanda in a touching scene in Life, Above All, with her ailing mother, Lillian, who is played by Lerato Mvelase. Picture: Handout/Supplied

Khomotso Manyaka in her role as Chanda in a touching scene in Life, Above All, with her ailing mother, Lillian, who is played by Lerato Mvelase. Picture: Handout/Supplied

Published Jan 7, 2012

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In between big names like Brad Pitt and Meryl Streep, featuring on Time magazine’s list of the 10 best movie performances of last year is a South African teenager - who had never acted until she was cast in the film Life, Above All.

Khomotso Manyaka, 15, was 13 when she was cast as Chanda in the film, based on the Allan Stratton novel, Chanda’s Secrets, which chronicles a young girl’s struggle with dealing with her parents’ illness and the stigma associated with HIV/Aids.

Time says of her performance: “Khomotso Manyaka was no Hollywood moppet, just a South African girl who had never acted, when director Oliver Schmitz picked her for the lead role in this starkly poignant drama about a family, a village, and a people devastated by the Aids plague. Given the challenge, Manyaka invested the part of Chanda, the sole strength of her ravaged clan, with amazing poise, delicacy and grit.”

Speaking from Mpumalanga this week, Manyaka said: “I’m very proud of myself: 2011 was a great year.”

She is going into Grade 10 this year at the National School of the Arts, to which she and her co-star and friend, Keaobaka Makanyane, received bursaries following the movie.

Life, Above All and Manyaka’s performance - she features in nearly every scene - have gathered several high-profile accolades. Last year, Manyaka walked away with the best-actress award at the SA Film and Television Awards, and the previous year she won the best-actress award at the Durban International Film Festival. The movie was also shortlisted by the Academy Awards committee in the category of Best Foreign Film. When it showed at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010, the film received a 10-minute standing ovation.

Manyaka says the recognition makes her “happy”.

“It’s surprising to me because I never knew I had talent.”

However, casting agent Moonyeenn Lee, who found Manyaka among 200 other local children in Elandsdoorn, Mpumalanga, where the movie was shot, said she “stuck out” instantly.

Manyaka hadn’t even realised what she was getting into when she auditioned, she says, after being taken to the audition by a woman she knew from a choir.

“It’s in the eyes. I always watch the eyes when I cast,” Lee says.

“Khomotso came in and she didn’t act. I didn’t give them a script, because I find with children that if you give them a script, they’ll learn it and recite it.

“So we did some improvisations and when I got her on film, I showed Oliver Schmitz and he came to SA immediately.”

Lee said the recognition by Time magazine was “amazing”, and that she believed it was the first time a South African actress had featured on such a list.

Manyaka says she’s not currently working on any new films, and that there is nothing in the pipeline for her for the year so far.

“I’m just concentrating on school now,” she said. - Pretoria News Weekend

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