Jenna Bass
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Jenna Bass | |
|---|---|
 Bass in 2018 | |
| Born | Jenna Cato Bass 1986 Camden, London, England |
| Nationality | South African |
| Alma mater | AFDA |
| Years active | 2010–present |
Jenna Cato Bass (born 1986) is a South African film director, screenwriter, and author. She has written short stories under the pseudonym Constance Myburgh, one of which was shortlisted for the 2012 Caine Prize.[1][2]
Early life
[edit]Bass was born in London, England and grew up in South Africa.[3] She practiced magic at the College of Magic. She went onto graduate from the Cape Town campus of AFDA, The School for the Creative Economy.
Career
[edit]In 2011 Bass founded Jungle Jim, a genre fiction magazine. Issue 6 featured her noir detective story 'Hunter Emmanuel', featuring an investigation into a dismembered prostitute. The story was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2012.[1]
Bass's first feature film, Love the One You Love, was shot on a 'nano-budget' using hand-held consumer cameras and a partly improvised script. The film told the story of a sex phone operator negotiating her relationship with her boyfriend and considering a move to Korea.[4] The film won Best South African Feature Film at the 2014 Durban International Film Festival.[5]
High Fantasy (2017) was a satirical thriller about a group of young travellers who mysteriously exchange their bodies on a camping trip. Shot on iPhones, using improvisation, the film explored "the messy tangle of race, class and gender identity in modern-day South Africa."[6]
Flatland (2019), an all-female "South African kitsch-western genre mashup", was shot on a larger budget.[7] It was chosen as the opening film in the 2019 Berlinale Panorama.[8]
Works
[edit]Short stories
[edit]Bass first started using a pseudonym, Constance Myburgh, in 2011 when publishing stories in her literary magazine, Jungle Jim, to keep her author's profile separate from her role as a screenwriter in the film industry. [9]
- "A Hole in the Ground" (Jungle Jim Volume. 2)
- "Hunter Emmanuel" (Jungle Jim, Volume 6) Shortlisted for the Caine Prize in 2012.
Filmography
[edit]| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Cinematographer | Other | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | The Tunnel | Yes | Yes | Yes | Part of Africa First: Volume One | ||
| 2014 | Love the One You Love | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Editor, production designer | |
| 2017 | High Fantasy | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| 2018 | Rafiki | Yes | |||||
| 2019 | Sizohlala | Yes | Yes | Short film | |||
| 2019 | Flatland | Yes | Yes | ||||
| 2019 | Neighbours | Yes | |||||
| 2021 | Good Madam | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Production designer, Casting | |
| 2021 | Tug of War | Yes |
References
[edit]- ^ a b Alison Flood, 'African Booker' shortlist offers an alternative view of continent, The Guardian, 1 May 2012.
- ^ Caine Prize (2012). The Caine Prize for African Writing 2012. New Internationalist. p. 108. ISBN 978-1-78026-075-4.
- ^ "Jenna Cato Bass". Moscow Film Festival. Retrieved 9 March 2022.
- ^ Tymon Smith, Movie Review: 'Love the One You Love' is a cinematic treat, The Sunday Times, 18 September 2015.
- ^ Baldwin Ndaba; Therese Owen; Masego Panyane (2019). The Black Consciousness Reader. OR Books. p. 341. ISBN 978-1-68219-172-9.
- ^ Christopher Vourlias, South Africa’s Jenna Bass Explores Race, Class and Gender in ‘High Fantasy’, Variety, July 21, 2019.
- ^ Andrew Gutman, Berlinale first look: Flatland is an intriguingly kitsch South African western, Sight & Sound, 27 August 2019.
- ^ Sophie Mayer, Berlinale 2019 Review: Flatland, Berlin Film Journal, February 2019.
- ^ Town, Geoff Ryman Issue: 100 African Writers of SFF-Part Three: Cape (3 March 2017). "Constance Myburgh a.k.a. Jenna Bass". Strange Horizons. Retrieved 6 November 2024.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
External links
[edit]- Jenna Bass at IMDb
- Geoff Ryman, Constance Myburgh a.k.a. Jenna Bass, Strange Horizons, 2017.
