2005 Tsotsi

Fugard's novel Tsotsi was been filmed: "Set amidst the sprawling Johannesburg township of Soweto - where survival is the primary objective - Tsotsi traces six days in the life of a ruthless young gang leader who ends up caring for a baby accidentally kidnapped during a car-jacking."  Directed by Gavin Hood with Presley Chweneyagae as Tsotsi.  The film won the oscar for the best foreign language film in 2006.

Valley Song

There was an attempt to film Valley Song in 2004-2005 but nothing has been heard recently.

2001 The Island

A BBC World Service radio broadcast with John Kani and Winston Ntshona. The broadcast is based on the world tour of the play, and is produced for the radio by Andy Jordan.  The mime sequences are replaced by a voice-over.  After the broadcast John Kani gave a short interview "...we knew we were going to take on the establishment under the pretext of a play".

2000 Boesman and Lena

Danny Glover and Angela Bassett star in this major adaptation. The film hit problems when director John Berry died in the post-production stage.

The flashbacks, for example to the couple looking at the coffin of their baby, are harrowing but destroy the flow of the film.

1997 Playland

An L.A. Theatre Works audio cassette of a live performance by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company with Lou Ferguson and Francis Guinan, directed by Nan Withers-Wilson.  A good audio version, with the humour coming over.

1997 The Art of Influence

A documentary by Deborah Dickson and Roberto Guerra.  Various people discuss the influences on their work, with Fugard talking about the influence on him by Bertolt Brecht.

1996 The Road to Mecca

An audio cassette of Julie Harris, Amy Irving and Harris Yulin recorded by the L.A. Theatre Works in 1996. The director was Steve Albrezzi. A good audio version.

1993 In Darkest Hollywood (Cinema and Apartheid)

A documentary about the way cinema in Hollywood and South Africa has handled apartheid.  Fugard does not appear, there is a photo of him from Boesman and Lena, as well as excerpts from the film. Ross Devenish gives a very good description of the influence Fugard had on him.  The film also heavily criticises Attenborough's Cry Freedom, with the white character dominating the film, contrasted with Euzhan Palcy´s Cry Freedom. Zakes Mokae gives a good assessment of what is was like living under apartheid.

1992 The Road to Mecca

Fugard and Peter Goldsmid share directing credits. Fugard also stars along with Kathy Bates and Yvonne Bryceland.  The films is chronological so unlike the play starts with the funeral of the old woman's husband and her estrangement with the church. The effect is to remove a lot of the suspense and mystery of the play.  Similarly it is filmed in the original location, but this removes the stage beauty of the play, and the owls and animals end up looking like bad ornaments.

1988 One Life to Live

Fugard has a guest role in the American TV drama. "Athol played Cornelius Blackwell (Ursula Blackwell's father - the mad woman who kidnapped Tina), a lighthouse keeper. When Ursula kidnapped Tina she brought her to his lighthouse and when she started running out of time because the police were on their way she pushed Tina through the window which caused Tina to be thrown on Cornelius and together they fell from the window. Tina fell on Cornelius and survived (She lost the baby she was carrying though) but Cornelius died from this fall".   Thanks to Ido for the information. Click here for Ido´s OLTL site

1986 Blood Knot

Zakes Mokae and Athol Fugard in this audio cassette/CD of the play. Fugard directs this 25th anniversary production at Yale Repertory Theatre and Broadway's Golden Gate Theatre.  Highly recommended.  Fugard says "Zakes and I returned to Blood Knot last year with a real measure of apprehension and anxiety. Would the play stand the test of time... both as a theatrical and political event?... the response of the audiences and critics was overwhelming and also made this Blood Knot one of the most deeply satisfying experiences in my career in theatre".

1985 Master Harold...and the Boys

A television version of the play with the young Matthew Broderick acting opposite John Kani and Zakes Mokae. Michael Lindsay-Hogg directs. One of the few films of Fugard´s work which is easy to obtain.  A reasonably good production.

1984 The Killing Fields

A true story set during the Khmer Rouge dictatorship of Cambodia. Directed by Roland Joffé, his first cinema film.  The first half of the film shows the events leading to the Khmer Rouge victory, and the forced exodus of the entire population from the cities.  There is a short interlude in the embassy, as people with the relative protection of their passports try to help Dith Pran to escape. Fugard plays a small role in these scenes.  When the attempts fail Dith Pran has to be surrendered and the second half of the film deals with the horrors inflicted by the Khmer Rouge.

1982 Gandhi

Richard Attenborough’s film with Fugard playing Jan Christian Smuts, who dismisses the passport burning of Gandhi in South Africa.   A good commercial epic, though just as in Cry Freedom (in which Zakes Mokae appears), Attenborough introduces the white perspective as a dominating influence.

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1982 Fugard´s People

A documentary by Helena Nogueira with interviews and rehearsals. Includes Fugard, Sheila Fugard and Yvonne Bryceland.

1981 Sizwe Bansi is dead

A second version of the play with John Kani and Winston Ntshona.  Directed by Merrill Brockway CBS.

1979 Marigolds in August

A film screenplay written with Ross Devenish. Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona together.  "They say that people who talk to themselves are mad/ I wasn't talking to myself/ Who were you talking to/ God".  Ntshona plays Daan, Kani plays Melton and Fugard plays Paulus Olifant.  The other players are Joyce Hesha (Melton´s Wife), Mabel Ntshinga (Emily) and Dudu Nene, Zoal Marwanqa, Nomonde Mhlobiso and Tata U-Ngesi.  Photography was by Michael Davis, Editing by Michael Davis and the producers were Jonathan Cohen and Mark Forstater.

Photo left of Winston Ntshona in Marigolds from Stephen Gary's Athol Fugard

1979 Meetings with Remarkable Men

A film about the mystic G.I. Gurdjieff, directed by Peter Brook.  The child Gurdjieff wanders through Asia building up his experiences leading to him developing his way of thinking into The Fourth Way.  The film has good visual scenes such as a child unable to escape out of the circle drawn in the sand until Gurdjieff breaks the circle for him, or the pack of dogs surrounding the travellers.   Fugard has a role as the professor, one of the remarkable men Gurdjieff meets.  But when the actors speak they are stilted and unnatural. The films ends up strangely like an early Hollywood biblical epic, the young Gurdjieff/Jesus in a number of episodes demonstrating his divine powers and understanding, then the older Gurdjieff´s words treated too reverently and so ending up as clichés.  The scene with the dogs owes much to a similar scene in The Omen filmed three years earlier.  Brook would later stage Sizwe Bansi.

1979 A Lesson from Aloes

Directed by Ross Devenish for the BBC.

1978 Sizwe Bansi is dead

Starring John Kani and Winston Ntshona.  Directed by John Davis for the BBC.

1977 Hello and Goodbye

Directed by Ross Devenish and starring Yvonne Bryceland and Bill Flynn.

1976 The Guest: an episode in the life of Eugene Marais

A TV screenplay written with Ross Devenish. Originally called The Guest at Steenkampskraal. Based on an episode in Leon Rousseau's biography of Eugene Marais Die Groot Verlange.  Marais was the author of The Soul of the Ape and The Soul of the White Ant.  A poet and naturalist he was addicted to morphine and looked at the animal world to understand the essence of addiction.  Fugard played the role of Marais "an important experience and possibly the most demanding and challenging role I have ever attempted. I have returned with a love and understand for that little portion of the Highveld where we worked, that will stay with me the rest of my life."

"Athol Fugard plays the Afrikaner intellectual, naturalist, poet, author and rebel Eugene Marais, who publicly attacked Kruger's repressive Transvaal government and raised hackles by lecturing on 'The Joys of Opium'. Focused on when he was trying to overcome morphine addiction on a remote farm, Devenish's film is a dark, poetic examination of a life which, in Marais' words, was 'founded on pain and sorrow'. (from BFI programme)

Photo of Fugard playing the role of Marais from Stephen Gray´s Athol Fugard

1974 Boesman and Lena

Directed by Ross Devenish and starring Fugard and Yvonne Bryceland.  Sandy Tube plays Outa and other roles (not in the play) are Perey Sieff (fisherman), Robert Pennacchini (bulldozzer driver), Val Donald (bait-shop owner), Frank Zietsman (official) and Bert Coppin (bottle-shop owner).  Fugard wrote the screenplay.  Photography was by David Muir, editing by John Scott and Roger Harris, sound by James Watt and the producer was Johan Wight.  The film "In Darkest Hollywood" includes excerpts from the film and discusses the difficulties of filming, with South Africa secret police watching them continually.  The film begins with a recreated shanty town being demolished.  The photo below of Fugard in the film from Walder´s Athol Fugard.

1968 Mille Miglia

"I don’t know which had the greatest shame, the man or the car…people say he was driving to kill himself"
"A thousand miles to get nowhere"

A surprising Fugard piece written by Fugard for the BBC, and later in 1970 repeated as part of their Wednesday Play series. It is about motor racing with Stirling Moss and Denis Jenkinson preparing for the race at Mille Miglia "I can still see it so clearly…the pit crew were nervous…the mechanic with the petrol fumbled…Lindemaier’s overalls were in flames".  Tom Stoppard (in Stephen Grey´s Athol Fugard) says "the scenes where they sat side by side at a table, Moss miming at a wheel, Jenkinson signalling like a machine, shouting the kilometers and mimicking the horn...had the weird perfection of pure sound made".

Written for the BBC during a difficult time for Fugard "Really feel the loss of my passport for the first time these past two weeks. Re-examining and reworking Mille Miglia for Robin Midgley in London. The BBC have invited me to London for the filming".  It was filmed in colour, but because technology was then not good enough to shoot in colour on location, it meant the entire story had to be filmed indoors.  Stirling Moss objected to his portrayal which led to restrictions on the film being shown.  Michael Bryant played Stirling Moss, Ronald Lacey played Denis Jenkinson and the rest of the cast were Guy Deghy (Alfred Neubauer), George Roubicek (Hugo), Douglas Ditta (waiter) and Fabio Galvano (radio commentator).  The TV play was been adapted for the theatre as "Drivers" by David Muir.

1967 The Blood Knot

A BBC filmed play production.  In Notebooks Fugard says "Back in S´Kop after five weeks in London for BBC TV production of The Blood Knot. Myself as Morrie, with Charles Hyatt as Zach. Robin Midgley directing.  Midgley reduced the play to 90 minutes...Midgley did manage to dig up things that had been missed in all the other productions. Most exciting was his treatment of the letter writing scene - ´Address her` -which he turned into an essay in literacy...Zach sweating as the words clot in his mouth..."

1964 The Occupation

"There are no anchors. Nothing is heavier than time"

A television script but never filmed. The camera enters a ruined house at about the same time as four tramps, Barend, Koosie, Serge (Sergeant) and Cappie (The Captain) enter. These white ex-soldiers explore the house "stinking rich is you ask me…Wealth doesn’t stink, Sergeant" and what remains from the previous inhabitants "This…is another man’s memory, and what’s the bet he hates it".

Fugard in Notebooks says "My next idea was a group of white hobos I saw one day in Johannesburg. At first I thought of a play covering one of their days from start to finish- yesterday I suddenly saw the play covering only the end of their day- in an empty, partly demolished house. The Occupation. What is it about? Walls, I suppose. Why we build them, imprison ourselves and live out lives away behind them, why we hate, need, even destroy them."