Three legends to be honoured at this year’s Silwerskermfees
Three of South Africa’s most distinctive entertainment voices will be celebrated at this year’s 14th Silwerskerm Festival. Filmmaker Koos Roets, actor Ivan Abrahams and writer-director Willie Esterhuizen will receive honours for their lifetime contributions to the entertainment industry at Silwerskerm Awards.
The three recipients have each left a significant mark on South African film and television in very different ways, from Roets’ decades behind the camera, to Abrahams’ pioneering work across stage and screen, and Esterhuizen’s contribution to comedy through some of the country’s most beloved television shows.
Roets will receive his accolade on the morning of Saturday, 22 August at The Bay Hotel, while Abrahams and Esterhuizen will be honoured that evening during the Silwerskerm Awards for Film and Television at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC).
Koos Roets: a career built on discipline, love and respect
Koos Roets (83) was already entertaining children in Prieska with his stories using homemade projectors while still a primary school child. His great baptism of fire, however, came as a 27-year-old cameraman on director Jans Rautenbach’s Jannie Totsiens , a groundbreaking film with technical and emotional challenges that would have broken most other cameramen. His career began in 1962 as a camera assistant for Jamie Uys. He also went on to direct a great deal himself, for both film and television, which included directing PG du Plessis’s popular television series Koöperasiestories. And in October this year, he begins filming his latest film, The Sky Trap, which is about a Spitfire fighter pilot in the Second World War. Roets wonders tongue-in-cheek what makes him a legend.
Because I have lasted 64 years in the industry? But I am very proud of and deeply grateful for the award!
An unforgettable moment in his career is precisely his very first job with Jamie Uys and the first time he shot something with a real 35 mm Arriflex camera. “Jamie was always my hero, not The Phantom or Tarzan.”
It was also the very same Jamie who taught him the most important lesson about the industry, never to forget the “big E”. “E for entertaining. It does you no good if you have made a clever, artsy thing and it lies on the shelf and no one wants to watch it! Rather win the viewer over with a bit of humour to bring your message home than with a lot of suffering! It will stay in your mind a great deal longer. PG du Plessis was a master at this. Just as you are having a good laugh, he sticks a knife in your stomach and gives it a twist!”
Ivan Abrahams: celebrating the power of comedy
Ivan Abrahams (74) made his acting debut “as the fifth tree from the left” in Adam Small’s Kanna hy kô hystoe in 1973. His path crossed with that of Small when he was a student teacher. His professional acting career only began in 1982 with outstanding stage roles ranging from the title role in Shakespeare’s King Lear to an addict in Oscar Petersen and Heinrich Reisenhofer’s Suip! He did pioneering work by bringing theatre into education. He was part of many firsts in a period when change and renewal were desperately needed, and he paved the way for others who would come after him. On the small screen, viewers know him for his roles in, among others, Suidooster, Spinners, and Kelders van geheime.
Although he would not claim the title of legend for himself, he is grateful for the recognition for the years that he “served the industry with love and respect as a hardworking actor”. Every time he is called to play a role on stage or in television and film is a wonderful moment for him, “but when Waldimar Pelser (Director of Premium Channels) called me to say that kykNET and the Silwerskerm Festival wanted to honour me, I had to quickly swallow a few Calmettes to process the call”.
His advice to young people in the industry is not to “chase glitz, glamour, and fame and walk around with a big head. Your talent must be accompanied by discipline, hard work, love, and respect for the industry – including fellow actors, directors, and everyone who is part of the production. Glitz, glamour, and fame will come looking for you.”
Willie Esterhuizen: celebrating the power of comedy
Willie Esterhuizen (71) can rightly be described as one of the entertainment giants in our country and a pioneer in the comedy genre. Whether as writer, director, or actor, he has become a national treasure with comedic television hits such as Orkney snork nie, Vetkoekpaleis, and Molly en Wors. This comedy genius has reminded South Africa that humour is the glue that holds all people together. That laughter is necessary.
For Willie, it is a great privilege that kykNET thinks he deserves to be honoured as a legend, “because actually I am now more nervous about performing and writing than I was when I was younger”. He says the greatest moment in his career was when producer Helena Spring called him to inform him that he had been cast as Faan in Faan se trein. It was released in 2014 and directed by fellow legend Koos Roets. The best advice he has ever received comes from PG du Plessis.
When you are writing a screenplay, do not talk to everyone about it – you talk away the energy you need for writing, and then you can no longer write it.
*The 14th kykNET Silwerskerm Festival takes place from 19 to 22 August in Camps Bay, Cape Town. Tickets for the films, as well as the prestigious awards ceremony on the evening of Saturday, 22 August at 18:00 at the CTICC, are available at Quicket. The Saturday morning awards ceremony begins at 10:00 in the Rotunda at The Bay Hotel.
For the 14th Silwerskerm Festival full programme, visit www.silwerskermfees.co.za.
