She Put Heart Into Festival Winner ‘Apart’

Shawn Slovo, author of the autobiographical “A World Apart,” has reason to believe its 5-year journey to the screen was worth the struggle. At the conclusion of the Cannes Film Festival on Monday, the British-produced South African drama received the special jury prize and an ensemble acting award for its three principal actresses--Barbara Hershey, Jodhi May and Linda Mvusi.

“Cannes was a truly extraordinary experience,” she said Tuesday from her London home. “I mean, it’s an international forum and was our first opportunity to see how different people would respond to the film. It received standing ovations at all three of its screenings, which is quite rare.”

Slovo said she was surprised to learn from the producers that they had received interest from a South African distributor but that the film will not be sold there “out of respect to the international cultural boycott.”

“I hope the film will serve as a focus to the South African situation through the personal story,” she said.

Before Cannes, Slovo screened her film at several universities in the United States, including UCLA and USC. Despite the obvious commitment and passion that she invested in the story, Slovo seemed anything but dogmatic. Rather, her sense of humor and balanced assessment of the art and commerce of film making was disarmingly fresh.

The film, set in 1963, centers on Molly (based on Slovo and played by May), the 13-year-old daughter of parents actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement. In the film, Molly’s father has left South Africa to avoid arrest, but Diana Roth, her journalist mother (Hershey), stays on to continue the fight and care for their three daughters.

While the political aspect of the film can’t be ignored, “A World Apart” has been widely lauded for its emotional depiction of a unique relationship between a mother and her daughter. Diana Roth’s (modeled on Slovo’s mother, Ruth First) slavish commitment to the “cause” is shown to carry with it a tremendous psychological toll.

Molly, the eldest, feels the full impact of being ostracized by her friends because there’s no adult who bothers to explain the turbulent political changes occurring in the country.

“In real life, the relationship with my mother was never truly resolved,” said the 37-year-old writer. “She was assassinated by a letter bomb in 1982 in Mozambique, where she was working as a writer and teacher. The script became a way of dealing with her loss. It was my way of talking about Ruth.

“The pain I’d felt while growing up--particularly her not being there when I felt I needed her--was something we’d just started to talk about. But the physical distance between us (Slovo was living in New York in 1982) made intimate communication quite impossible.”

Slovo noted that the death of her mother also coincided with her decision to move out of film production and into writing. Starting in 1974, she had worked for such producers as Elliott Kastner (“The Missouri Breaks,” “Angel Heart”) and Arnon Milchan (“Brazil”). She served as actor Robert De Niro’s personal assistant on “King of Comedy,” and when that project was completed, she decided to enroll in Britain’s National Film School in 1983 because “I always thought I could write, and that opportunity wasn’t going to happen unless I took it.”

Slovo retains her sense of humor about the way films are made.

“I’d worked too long in the business to expect that what I wrote (of ‘World Apart’) would at all resemble what wound up on screen. The experience was too good . . . it’s all downhill from here, because I will not be consoled by money in the future.”

She laughed when recalling how she was the only person in her class who wanted to be a writer. It meant that her script received a lot of attention from the all the would-be directors. On reflection, Slovo can trace with pride how her script evolved from an acutely autobiographical account “consumed with pain” to “something more viably dramatic.”

“The dilemma for Molly and me was a struggle for attention,” Slovo said. “A 13-year-old doesn’t understand the subtleties of politics. She wants her mother’s affection, so she takes Diana’s going to jail as a personal affront.”

Slovo said that, unlike Molly, she was totally unaware of what her mother experienced in detention. Ruth First simply never spoke of it, and so it was not until the publication of First’s personal account, “One Hundred and Seventeen Days,” that Slovo was able to glimpse that horror.

“She wasn’t terribly verbal with me or my sisters. I think Ruth simply didn’t know how to relate to us,” recalled Slovo. “It’s not really surprising that she didn’t understand how deeply affected we were by what happened.”

Though nearly two years were spent writing and rewriting “A World Apart,” favorable word on the script had leaked out early in the British film industry. Sarah Radclyffe and Tim Bevan, the producers of “My Beautiful Laundrette,” optioned it, and Slovo was hired--based upon an early draft--by producer David Puttnam to work on another South African-themed property, “A Dry White Season,” which is now filming in Zimbabwe for MGM.

“He wanted me to rewrite the woman’s role. It had to be done in 28 days, but on the 27th day David announced he had accepted the chairmanship of Columbia Pictures.”

(Puttnam is no longer involved with the movie.)

By the time filming began on “A World Apart” in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, in June, 1987, Slovo and director Chris Menges had again made extensive revisions to the script.

“What truly amazed us was how much more easy it was going to be to transform Bulawayo into Johannesburg of 1963. Chris immediately had me move more of the story outdoors, which truly enhanced the production. It also reminded me that what I miss most about Africa are its unique sights and sounds. I’d love to go back to South Africa, but it won’t happen until all its people march through the gates of Pretoria together.”

For security reasons, the film was innocuously publicized as a “mother-daughter” story. Slovo, who had to enter Zimbabwe on several occasions, dyed her hair blond and always traveled using forged documents.

“My father (currently a member of the African National Congress in Zambia), who came to South Africa from Russia as a teen-ager, has spent his entire life crossing borders with other people’s papers. It’s a kind of art form which he taught me.”

Slovo, who said she retains her membership in the ANC, describes herself as a “modest activist.”

“I don’t think it’s coincidental that I chose to work in an area dramatically different from my parents,” she said. “I hope, of course, to do work that is helpful in the struggle against human oppression, but that’s coincidental.”