Post date: Nov 03, 2013 2:28:8 PM
Family and friends of Nelson Mandela gather at the Centre of Memory named after him inJohannesburg for the launch of "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom", a biographical feature film about the former South African president.
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA (NOVEMBER 2, 2013) (REUTERS) - Nelson Mandela's daughter Zindzi joined the former South African president's friendTokyo Sexwale and the cast of "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom" on Saturday (November 2) at a news conference for the film's launch in South Africa, ahead of its premiere on Sunday (November 3) in Soweto.
Launching the film at the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory in Johannesburg, Zindzi and Sexwale talked to journalists about the film alongside producer Anant Singh, director Justin Chadwick and actress Naomie Harris.
British actor Idris Elba, who plays the adult Mandela, was conspicuous by his absence at the new conference having earlier suffered from breathing difficulties, Singh said.
"Idris Alba was on the plane last night," Singh explained. "He had a very severe asthma attack. They had to take him off the plane. He is in hospital today and we send him our best wishes. He is hoping to try and make it today if he gets a clean bill of health, and we just hope that he's a lot better and our love and thoughts are with him."
Based on Mandela's autobiography by the same name, "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom" chronicles the life and journey of the anti-Apartheid leader and father of the multi-racial "Rainbow Nation" from childhood through to rights campaigner and his subsequent inauguration as the first democratically elected president of South Africa.
Zindzi told those gathered at the news conference reliving difficult parts of her childhood on screen was a testing experience, but one that was ultimately fulfilling.
"When I watched the movie it was a very emotional time for me," she said. "And I actually said to Anant I wish I had watched it alone. Because I found it quite therapeutic and it made me confront many emotions that I'd buried, that I had refused to acknowledge.
"I found that his ability to have summarised so many life experiences around my mother, around ourselves in to one short movie, I thought was, like, simply incredible.
"Without giving too much away, even at episodes that where my father lost, my grandmother died whilst dad was in prison, my brother died whilst dad was in prison, but in the movie it comes together so beautifully as one scene and it doesn't rob, it doesn't take away any of the pain and the emotion of losing either one of them. It's extremely well executed and very sincere."
The film is an independent South African production which took two years to shoot and cost $35 million to make, but the biggest challenge of all was, according to British director Justin Chadwick, ensuring the story was an honest South African account of the time.
"I felt very free being from outside, but I also felt it was a responsibility being a director here to work with South Africans and you know, in front and behind the camera," Chadwick said. "Those people that you see in the movie, there's thousands and thousands of people in front and behind the camera; South Africans.
"And it was my job to create a 360-degree world that felt real and honest to the people that I was representing. So I lost my Britishness, if you like, and just wanted to live here and understand it and understand what I was portraying as honestly as I could, and that was my intention.
"So I lost my Britishness, if you like, and just wanted to live here and understand it and understand what I was portraying as honestly as I could, and that was my intention."
Nelson Mandela has been in a critical but stable condition since June and returned to his home Sept. 1 after three months in hospital with a reoccurring lung ailment, a legacy of the nearly three decades he spent in jail.
He continues to receive intensive care at his home in Johannesburg's Houghton suburb which has been "reconfigured" to allow him to get special care there.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate's latest hospitalisation in June had attracted a wave of attention and sympathy at home and across the world.
Singh said Mandela had been shown scenes from the film more than a year ago, and had been so convinced by the makeup and prosthetics donned by Elba that he mistook some of them for actual footage from the time.
"He looked through the pictures, and he got to one picture which was the older Madiba in the Madiba shirt and he looks at me and he smiles and he says, I can't do the Tokyo Sexwale version but: 'Is that me?'," Singh said.
"And I said 'Madiba, do you really think it's you?' And then he smiled again, and I said 'This is Idris in makeup after five and a half hours of prosthetics, so he spent from 5 o'clock in the morning till 10:30 getting into that space, and then went to shoot after that' so Madiba was very amused. I showed him some of those images of the makeup and the prosthetics, and when I told Idris about it, he said 'Well that's all I need to hear. If he thought that was him, I'm good with that'. So it was really nice that I got to do that."
Mandela made his last public appearance waving to fans from the back of a golf cart before the soccer World Cup final in Johannesburg in 2010.
In April the country's state broadcaster aired a clip of the thin and frail statesman being visited by President Jacob Zuma and top officials from the African National Congress.
He was elected South Africa's first black president in multi-racial elections in 1994 that ended white minority rule.
The film is not the first portrayal of Mandela on the silver screen - 2009's "Invictus", directed byClint Eastwood and starring Morgan Freeman, followed the events in South Africa before and after the 1995 Rugby World Cup.
"Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom" premieres on Sunday in South Africa and is scheduled for release in the U.S. on Nov. 29.