South Africa / 2002 / 26mins / Drama / English and Afrikaans

In an unnamed section of 1970s Johannesburg, a cheerful, inquisitive schoolboy named Sharky stares transfixedly at a billboard poster promoting the screening of the Burt Lancaster film, Valdez is Coming at a local theater. Living under the custody and supervision of his grandmother after his parents were forcibly uprooted and relocated to distant parts of Johannesburg during the implementation of apartheid segregation, young Sharky's childhood, nevertheless, retains a semblance of normalcy in spite of the political turmoil surrounding his country: an idyllic childhood filled with doting affection, playground misadventures, and curious bewilderment (in particular, from an eccentric relative whose ambition is to pass for a white person and, perhaps implicitly, avoid the mandated segregation). Unable to raise enough money to watch the film first-hand, he instead buys admission into the narrated installments of the story that his friends re-enact nightly around a bonfire. However, when his grandmother unexpectedly falls ill, Sharky ends up missing the end of the film. Filmmaker Dumisani Phakathi presents an understated and evocative quotidian portrait of life in 1970s apartheid-era segregation in Waiting for Valdez. Through the intrinsic correlation with Valdez is Coming - a film that, uncoincidentally, centers on a David and Goliath-styled retribution for a transgression that can never truly be set right - Phakathi presents Sharky's truncated story as an allegory for the broader national struggle sweeping South Africa as the turmoil and uncertainty of the times is revealed within the context of human history to merely serve as a delayed moment of inevitable reckoning.

Dumisani Phakathi

Dumisani Phakathi, aka Malo 8, is a Soweto-born director of television, films and commercials. He began making movies at the age of sixteen. After matriculating in 1993 at Phafogang High School in Soweto, he went to work at Die Beeld, Gauteng’s leading Afrikaans newspaper. He proved too gregarious for a newsroom and joined TV Production Company – Urban Brew – as a trainee director. A year later he conceptualized The Electric Workshop, the funky youth actuality program that went on to run for five successful years. Phakathi has collaborated with notable media organizations BBC, Arte and TV2 Denmark. He has received additional praise including a special mention at Toronto Film Festival, a Forum Selection at Berlin Film Festival and a Best Director award at Montecatini Film Festival. Waiting for Valdez, a short film produced for MNET, garnered a great deal of support and attention early on in his career. Some of Phakathi’s other works include An Old Wife's Tale and Don't F*** with Me, I Have 51 Brothers and Sisters (2005). In 2008, his Nocturnal Fragments, a collaboration between Pat Mautloa and Phakathi, which consists of digital stills that Phakathi made with his video camera turned into fine art prints, some of which have additional pastel work by Mautloa, were shown at Johannesburg’s new Resolution Gallery of Digital Art. Learn More