Diane De Beer
It was watching television during the night as an insomniac that alerted producer/presenter Coenie de Villiers to the documentary style of Louis Theroux, the English television personality best known for his documentaries in Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends and When Louis Met...
“I was fascinated by his style of film-making and at first couldn’t work out why it worked so well,” he says. He analysed the series and discovered the secret. “He never speaks to the viewer,” he says. “He creates a safe, intimate space which invites viewers to be spectators and then he doesn’t judge.”
De Villiers knew when he turned producer, that he wanted to tell stories, real life stories. “I don’t want to make reality programmes, I want to do real life,” he says.
He came up with 36 topics, all on subjects that intrigued him, such as handline fishermen, female body builders and petrolheads. Then he put together a veteran crew because he knew he would have to work with old hands and wise heads to produce‘n Ander Wêreld – met Coenie (Another World – with Coenie), a 13 part series that starts on kykNET on Sunday at 8pm.
De Villiers has spent most of his life in the entertainment business as singer/composer and presenter for 17 years of the magazine programme Kwêla, but also works as an independent strategic marketing consultant and serves as a director on the board of a construction company. He knows how to juggle the balls and how to get what he wants.
When he first brought the group together with Linda de Jager as director, his instructions were clear: they had to be real about the shoot, no judgement and no reconstruction. “We are shooting real people and real situations,” he says.
As presenter, he would often spend nights at the homes of the subjects even if this was on the street. “That’s when they start talking, when you get real,” says De Villiers.
He gets people to shed their skins and expose their hearts.
Take the handline fishermen of the West Coast. Sometimes these are the fourth generation of fishermen. The only thing they know is the sea. That’s where they have lost sons and that’s where they find their daily bread.
This series takes you into their lives, their dreams and hopes but more than anything their daily lives – it’s the early start of the day, the mist that suddenly appears on the ocean, the fragility of their small boats against a mighty ocean, the waiting on the shore, and the family.
It’s all there, shot in a landscape we know on the surface but forget to take note of the details. “For me, it was about shooting reality… not staging anything,” says De Villiers. Because of this authentic approach, they have fantastic footage. “You can’t help bursting into tears,” he says.
It’s about talking to rather than at people and going to the heart of their stories.
“This programme isn’t one we’re making,” he explains. “It’s making us.”
With 17 years’ experience as a presenter of the kykNet flagship magazine programme Kwêla, De Villiers recently resigned and also stopped singing and performing two years ago. He wants to be part of today’s conversation. .