Independent short film: Melkbrood
In emerging filmmaker Winford Collings’s latest project, the short film Melkbrood, the fragile relationship between a mother and daughter is explored against the backdrop of the Karoo landscape.
Winford shares more about this moving minimalist film starring actresses Khadija Heeger (Skemergrond) and René Cloete (Suidooster):
While both you and Deidré Jantjies were producers on the project, you wrote the screenplay. Where did the idea for the film come from, and why was it important for you to tell this story?
When I started writing Melkbrood, I was still in early post-production for my feature film ADAM, and part of me wanted to continue exploring the same underlying theme: the relationship between children and their parents, and how misunderstandings – whether accidental or intentional – can become a pattern. But this time I wanted to explore it on a smaller, more focused, more intimate scale.
[ADAM, available on Showmax, is part of a project launched by Showmax in collaboration with the Joburg Film Festival to support debut feature filmmakers. The producer is Blended Films, winners of four Silwerskerm awards for last year’s feature Hier.Na.]
Background music and dialogue are usually a roadmap for audiences’ emotions and help them connect with the feeling of a scene. In this film, silence contributes to the tension and unease. Why did you choose such a minimalist approach?
That’s thanks to René Cloete’s performance. There was originally another poem that was meant to appear in the first part of the film (we even used it in the trailer), but it felt out of place to include it in the film itself, because everything you need to know about the character and her inner world, was already present in René’s portrayal.
You always hope that people will understand it and start asking, ‘Why is there no music? What is the filmmaker trying to say?’, rather than switching off because it doesn’t feel immediately familiar.
One of the challenges with Melkbrood was making something that deliberately feels different from ADAM. I knew early on that I wanted Melkbrood to be more impressionistic rather than dialogue-driven or overlapping multiple storylines. I wanted to “explain” less. But you still need to be able to tell the story within the limited time frame of a short film.
There are only three actors in this film, and most of the interaction is between the characters played by Khadija Heeger (Ma) and René Cloete (Em). What’s the most important thing people should know about Ma and Em?
That’s something I’d rather leave up to the viewers. When I showed the film to friends, each person came up with a different theory about the characters, and each theory was more interesting than the last. I will say, though, that the trailer, which includes footage not in the final film, might give away a few clues.
What message did you want this film to convey, especially considering the stylistic choices you made?
The main goal for me was to make sure that the relationship between mother and daughter felt real. That it was something audiences could relate to, something they could sit with and feel part of, and hopefully find their own meaning in.
What’s the story behind the title?
Even though it’s never explicitly mentioned, the film is set in the Karoo, and my earliest memories of the Karoo are linked to milk bread. In early drafts of the screenplay, the food Ma prepares played a larger role, and that’s still reflected in the trailer. So Melkbrood was the working title from the start, and despite changes to the script, the title stuck.