Director’s Motivation
The Last Party started with a long standing fascination with the life of ID du Plessis, the liberal Afrikaner language professor at the University of Cape Town whose best work was devoted to the culture and history of the decedents of Malaysian slaves. The “Cape Malays” as they were known in the apartheid years had assimilated into Cape Town society – and in the process decisively shaped its unique character. Du Plessis wrote sensitive and empathic poems about prostitutes and child street vendors. He organised the Moslem choir board (which persists to this day) to preserve the Cape Malay choral tradition and promote local culture. Importantly for our story, he also wrote the first gay poem in Afrikaans – “Strange Love” (What would the pious defenders of probity say, if I revealed my strange love?…) He even had an affair with a male Cape Malay poet. Yet this sophisticated man accepted the post of secretary of the newly created “Department of Coloured Affairs” when called on by his old school mate Hendrick Verweod, the architect of apartheid. In this capacity he presided over the forced removal of sixty thousand people from Cape Town’s District Six and the bulldozing of the entire area.
Working with writer Paul Johnson, we are constructing two intersecting arcs, with the character of the bisexual creole Charles Arendse and his wife Gladys at its centre. Charles was the instigator and organiser of club life in district six. He was also the first to open a modern hair salon which recreated the bouffant styles of Elizabeth Taylor and that generation of Hollywood stars – epitomised by his favorite film The VIPs. Charles is the confident of Capuchine, a glamorous salon worker who is (eventually) happily “married” to a Moslem man who for all intents and purposes is straight. The salon was a head quarters for cultural life in District Six where party organising, boyfriend swapping, show choreography and the cut and thrust of daily life were driven by the pursuit of style and fun. The threat and then the reality of the forced destruction of District Six throws them into conflict with ID, the man who they had admired and partied with in their younger days. When at last the officials serve the eviction notices on Charles, forcing him to close the Salon, they determine to put up one last act of defiance. They will stage the greatest party District Six has ever seen. At dawn, when the party is over, all will gather in the salon and burn it down rather than see it meekly handed over to the officials and their bulldozers.
Our story begins in the opening excited moments of the last party in District Six. Moving backwards from there to Charles, Capuchine and ID’s younger days, the reality is slowly revealed. By the time we arrive back at the last party in the climactic scene of the film, we are fully aware of everything that has brought us to this point.
The Last Party tells of the intersecting lives and loves that make South Africa possible as a country. It also reveals the inner life of one of the most extraordinary communities which stood as a beacon for what might have been, for an alternative way of being and a humanity which speaks to us today, as in a dream.
Jack Lewis
Director : Jack Lewis
Producer : Idol Pictures
Scriptwriter : Paul Ian Johnson