When Derry Cage Nyakane's LOGIC OF DREAMS came into being, the film not only gave birth to Africa's first blockbuster film. It also exposed the exotic, hypermodern countryside of South Africa's Mpumalanga - - scenery, sun-drenched but striving areas that emerge, little by little, on the Afromontane forests and savannas with rocky outcrops housing over 4 million of the province's poorest, yet urbanizing citizens. Though teeming with wildlife-reserving and tourism, it soon became clear that this home to some of the oldest rocks on earth was filled with energetic characters, veiled dreams and invigorating stories never heard before.
The film went on to acquire inspiration from real life events. More recently, Derry Cage Nyakane, who had been working on a short film when he broke up with his fiancee, began collaborating with Mpumelelo Phiri to develop a feature film that would explore life in South Africa from a fresh perspective. In a sense, Nyakane wanted to reveal South Africa anew "from the opposite view that which South African films had used". If the preceding films were about crime and poverty in townships, with a political undertone, LOGIC OF DREAMS became about inextinguishable dreams that create destinies apart those cliches.
Explains Nyakane, who wrote this psychological thriller, and serves as director: 'Logic of Dreams' is a story about a young dreamer's psychology and his unstable emotional state. Love-conquers-all is the theme of the film, and, in the background, we see the character learning how to deal with agoraphobia. The film deals with the adversity of dreaming big in the countryside, while issues such as broken relationships and internal confict lie in the background. It is a very emotional experience.'
Logic of Dreams was born out of the raw truth of Mpumalanga life. Nyakane saw the unbelievable, inexplicable energy that was there. An enchanting true-life story, made more so by the fact that Nyakane veiled it with autobiographical references. In the world of the countryside, many children are raised with great desires and, as they grow up, they become content to go along filling the tiny niches in which they find themselves in. They accept their positions in life as something that fate has fixed for them - - people such as Nqobile, the girlfriend that wants Calvin to get a 9-to-5 job.
This, then, became a major thread winding its way through the narrative of LOGIC OF DREAMS. While Calvin tries to break the cycle by holding onto his childhood dreams to create his destiny, Nqobile, the love of his life, encourages him to discard his dreams and get a 9-to-5 job if he wants to be with her, which sets off events and unearths an explosive conflict - - that threatens their relationship forever. As it turns out, if Calvin continues to follow his complicated dream he will be financially stable. If he abandons his dreams, he will be with the woman that he loves.
Creating the World of LOGIC OF DREAMS:
It was vital to Derry Cage Nyakane to shoot LOGIC OF DREAMS in the rustic of Mpumalanga's countryside, as it would prove difficult to possibly recreate the overheated atmosphere and energy anywhere else on earth. Johannesburg was mooted, a sensible idea given how the city's infrastructure and film industry was perfectly used to handling international standard productions yet Nyakane, for one, was not convinced.
"I fought to shoot it in Mpumalanga,"he says. "We could've shot the whole film in Johannesburg, but I fought for it to be shot in and around Mpumalanga, because you just felt this unbelievable, inexplicable energy that was there, with these children, these locations. It was a different feeling - and I wanted to capture in the film and use in the film. We decided to shoot a few scenes in Johannesburg and Cape Town but eighty percent of the film was shot in Mpumalanga."
From romantic scenes of love to raw violence, the story of LOGIC OF DREAMS was captured on a 5D Mark II via 100% handheld cinematography of Vusi T. Mkanzi. The visual style of the film matches the theme of the story. The gritty look of harsh lighting and dark bleak colours help convey the tone of the film. Although it is a very stylized approach, the lighting of the film appears realistic. For both men, a documentary-like feel was key to both the drama and the high-velocity action.
Says Mkanzi of how he got hooked when he received the screenplay: "When I read the first page I thought, 'is this guy serious?' Violence and nudity! This really seemed wrong to me. I went into the second page and the story had taken a different direction already, I knew we'd all make the same film. It was fast paced, MTV kind of non-linear narrative - while squirreling in hard-hitting issues we had essentially an uplifting story about the power of perseverance. But, deep down, I knew I always wanted to make this kind of film."