MAKING an abstract film might be terribly clever, but the idea falls flat if you cannot engage the audience.
This is a hard-won lesson documentary film-maker Riaan Hendricks got to grips with when he tried to explain to a confused audience the meaning of The City that Killed Somalians some years ago.
Clever ideas don’t get you very far if the audience have nothing to identify with: “So, you persuade the audience with character, you draw them in with the story and the struggles and you hope you don’t isolate anyone,” said Hendricks in an interview about his latest project, Wild Dog and Mrs Heart.
Premiering at this year’s Encounters South African International Documentary Film Festival, the 52-minute documentary is about the infrequently discussed subject of euthanising unwanted and abandoned pets.
Hendricks’s documentaries are always sparked by a personal connection to the subject matter (like The Devil’s Lair which was about a childhood friend) and he only ever starts to make a film if a topic moves him.
Wild Dog and Mrs Heart, too, covers a subject close to his heart – he grew up in Mitchells Plain, always with a dog at his side, “venturing into the deep bush”.
“Just by default, there is a love for animals,” explained Hendricks.
He came across a newspaper article quoting Julia Evans of the Helderberg Animal Welfare Society, which mentioned the sheer number of healthy animals that are euthanised at their kennels on a regular basis and he approached them out of curiosity.
“I thought it was interesting because these guys never speak about things like this,” said Hendricks.
At first suspicious of his motives, it took a while for staff members to get comfortable with his small camera, but he knew he had won them over when they asked him one day: “But Riaan, aren’t you going to film the euthanasia?”
Up until this point he was trying to be respectful and build a relationship with the people: “You don’t know where the line is… Ideally, you want to take everything, but you can only take what they allow. From that day onwards, everything opened up.”
So, he shows the sad side of daily euthanasia and finished a seven-minute trailer which he showed to the people of the society: “All of them were crying, so I thought, ‘whoa, there’s something there, the film is touching unexpressed emotions’.”
He filmed for three months two years ago and is eternally grateful to the National Film and Video Foundation for supplying the money to handle a three-month edit of the independent film.
The documentary focuses on and shows the struggle of the Helderberg Animal Welfare kennels to deal with the ever-growing tide of unwanted pets which they have to put down in order just to make space for new ones.
This doesn’t mean Hendricks’s documentary comes down on the pro-life side of things: “I don’t support the idea that the animals should be kept alive just because. If they must be euthanised, they must be euthanised.”
Still, he feels the film could be useful to bring home to regular folk the consequences of not taking responsibility for your pets.
Filmed mostly in black and white, Wild Dog and Mrs Heart features a burst of colour only in its last segment, making the depicted positive encounter contrast even more with the preceding images. Hendricks deliberately used the black and white to signify the absence of hope: “They are constantly struggling with love for animals that no one wants. So, when I do bring it (colour) back, it should mean something significant.
“When the colour has to come in it is because that is the message behind the film – we need to try to preserve these animals’ lives, they are not material objects or a fashion statement.
“For me, that is the world they are trying to create, where despite the starkness these animals find themselves in, there is colour when they see the inspectors. Although those animals live in stark conditions, they are being taken care of and something good is happening to them.”
As for the title: “Whether they see who Wild Dog is, I don’t know. At least they meet Mrs Heart. She comes in at a point that is the lowest part of the film where it is just death that abounds.
“And, that is their normal,” he says, referring to the people working at the kennel.
• Wild Dog and Mrs Heart screens in Cape Town on Sunday at 8pm at the Cinema Nouveau, V&A Waterfront and on Thursday at 6.30pm at the LabiaWild Dog and Mrs Heart screens in Joburg on Tuesday at 8pm at The Bioscope. The screenings are followed by a Q&A session with the director.