Proteus (2003)

User Rating:

7.1/10   

Director:

John Greyson

Writers:

John Greyson (script)
Jack Lewis (script)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Plot:

An interracial gay love story set in early 18th century South Africa about two men -- a black prisoner living in a Cape Town penal colony and a Dutch sailor -- who weather injustices as a result of their affair.

Plot Keywords:

Anachronistic | Amsterdam Netherlands | Gay Interest | 18th Century | Anal Sex

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Rouxnet Brown	...	Claas Blank
Shaun Smyth	...	Virgil Niven
Neil Sandilands	...	Rijkhaart Jacobz
Kristen Thomson	...	Kate
Tessa Jubber	...	Elize
Terry Norton	...	Betsy
Adrienne Pierce	...	Tinnie (as Adrienne Pearce)
Grant Swanby	...	Willer
Brett Goldin	...	Lourens
A.J. van der Merwe	...	Settler
Dean Lotz	...	Governor
Jeroen Kranenburg	...	Scholz
Johan Jacobs	...	Nama Prisoner
Katrina Kaffer	...	Kaness
Kwanda Malunga	...	Claas (age 10)

Runtime:

Canada:100 min (Toronto International Film Festival) | USA:97 min

Country:

Canada | South Africa

Language:

English | Afrikaans | Dutch

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Certification:

UK:15

Company:

Pluck Productions

A cinema of marginality

Post-apartheid cinema is characterized by the emergence of new voices and a diversification of themes. For the first time South African audiences are exposed to certain marginalized communities, including gay and lesbian subcultures. An important milestone in South African feature film-making is Jack Lewis's Proteus, the beginning of a visible gay/lesbian cinema in South Africa. Under apartheid gay and lesbian voices in film and television were also silenced. In a seven year study of the depiction of gays and lesbians in African, Asian and Latin American cinema I have noted that homosexual experience is unique in South Africa, precisely because of our history of racial division and subsequent resistance. Based on a true story, PROTEUS is a period film that raises issues still of enormous relevance today. Historian and filmmaker Jack Lewis was fascinated by a court record in the Cape Archives, dated 18 August 1735, giving judgment in the case of two Robben Island prisoners. Dutch sailor Rijkhaart Jacobsz and Khoe convict Class Blank received extreme sentences for what the court called 'the abominable and unnatural crime of Sodomy'. It is an extremely moving experience and forms part of a very small number of South African productions on homosexuality. Despite a new constitution which prohibits discrimination against gays and lesbians, our images of gay men and women are limited and still on the margin of the film industry. One ends up with less than fifteen short films, a few documentaries, less than five features with openly gay and lesbian characters and virtually no television programmes during the past hundred years of South African cinema!