Huebschle’s Long walk to ‘Land of the Brave’

By the time Tim Huebschle sits down in a darkened theatre and hears the hush of an audience eager to see his first feature film, he would have been working on the project intermittently for half a decade.

Today, four years after he sent the second draft of his first feature length script to a cluster of close friends with a simple, “Please comment on the reading experience and how the movie plays out for you. Thank you and Merry Christmas,” Huebschle is at the beginning of an adventure that will change his life as well as Namibia’s filmic landscape forever.

This part of Huebschle’s story begins with seed funding.

More specifically, the N$750 000 the Namibia Film Commission (NFC) recently invested into his project tentatively titled ‘Land of the Brave’.

Though the investment is a vote of confidence and a sizeable injection, the current draft of Huebschle’s film will cost N$6 million to make.

He is not going to make it anyway.

Instead the next five months will be spent developing the script in order to comply with the strict guidelines of international funding institutions that he hopes will invest in his feature.

Local filmmaker, Oshosheni Hiveluah, who has read the script from first to fourth draft, will be promoted to lead writer, and a script editor from France, recommended by the film’s executive producer, Steven Markovitz, will make up the dream team that will elevate the script to something funders will be clamouring to throw money at.

As most funding institutions have bi-annual deadlines and won’t reconsider a script once it has been read and rejected, even after further revision, the next five months are crucial in terms of creating a script that is technically flawless and narratively appealing as a cross-section of life in contemporary Namibia.

Once everyone involved is happy with the script, April marks the beginning of submission deadlines and Huebschle believes his social drama within the context of a story inspired by the infamous B1 Butcher will have a fighting chance.

“The great thing about the funding from the NFC is that it shows that my own country is willing to put money into the film, says Huebschle. With almost a million dollars invested, international funding institutions will see that someone already took a leap of faith and it will be easier for them to follow suit.”

Huebschle also has plans to focus on and develop the commercial viability of the film by surrounding himself with individuals that can present the film to commercial funding institutions. Such a team will be in place by the middle of next year and will be primarily overseen by David Benade.

“David Benade is my partner in Collective Productions, the company producing the film, and he will manage the interests of the company and see that project is manageable and realistic, says Huebschle. He will make sure that the film is made to specification but that it doesn’t run the company into the ground in the process. During this period he will be known as David ‘Reality Check’ Benade,” quips Huebschle.

Though Huebschle’s first feature film is eagerly awaited, this period will run for almost two years.

Script development and fundraising will take place from now until November 2014 with the hopes of having raised 80% of the budget, failing which Huebschle will consider scaling down the script. This period will then give way to pre-production, which includes storyboarding, location scouting, casting and committing actors, rehearsal and working with the art department amongst other preparatory concerns, which Huebschle estimates will take about three months.

Shooting the film is estimated at four to five weeks. Post-production including editing, sound and colour grading, finishing and packaging will take five months. That is to say, once finance is in place, Huebschle believes the film will move from pre-production to post production within nine months.

If all goes smoothly from today onwards, ‘Land of the Brave’ will premiere in the vicinity of November 2015.

With regard to the NFC’s funding, it will be doled out to Collective Productions at the films four major developmental checkpoints. However, and despite offering the first investment, the NFC will have neither censorship rights nor creative say beyond their employment of South African filmmaker, Markovitz, who will have the NFC and the film’s best interest in mind in his role as executive producer.

As for Namibian crew, Oshosheni Hiveluah and David Benade are already attached to the project but Huebschle says the reality is that the film will not solely employ Namibians.

“There are some people I worked with on ‘Dead River’ who I would like to work with again but someone won’t just come and leave with their knowledge. There will be room for development as this is always close to my heart.

“The beautiful thing about this project is that it can be a blueprint for what it takes to make a feature film that has a strong local and international impact in Namibia. There will be people who can bring their knowledge to the country to maximise the success of the project. It will contribute to Namibia, not just in terms of the economy, but it will also contribute to Namibia’s identity as the film is set in contemporary Namibian society,” says Huebschle.

Asked to compare his N$750 000 for ‘Land of the Brave’ with the N$ 80 million ploughed into ‘Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation’ (2007), Huebschle is unwaveringly diplomatic and keeps his eye on the prize.

“It is a film that needed to be made. Politically the story was required to be told. I think the film’s budget relative to its commercial success is a valuable lesson learnt by government, the NFC, filmmakers and the greater Namibian society,” says Huebschle.

“The NFC is more careful. They are funding less and paying out their funding in increments. The film (‘Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation’) also made it clear that I need to have a good script, a plan and a marketable film. It made me more careful.

“I can’t say it’s unfair. Money was made available to my project in a way that is more realistic, if I want to make sustainable films. Getting all that funding from government coffers is not realistic. It also means the storyline and the whole film is dictated by the state and do we really want that?” says Huebschle.

With or without millions in government funding, Huebschle is hell bent on producing a film that will make Namibia shine in the eyes of locals and the world.

If you haven’t heard what the film is about, it suffices to say that the script was inspired by the notorious B1 Butcher – a serial killer who was active in Namibia between 2005 and 2007. Though the film draws some similarities to the case and uses the premise of a crime story as a backdrop, Huebschle maintains that the primary focus is the more human story of the two investigating officers.

“The film is not about the serial killer. It’s about two law enforcers, the choices they make, their everyday lives and how those choices impact their professional lives. It is about human error and the grave mistakes that come back to haunt us. It deals with the urban problems of crime, infidelity and drug abuse and it’s about what it means to be living in Windhoek right now,” says Huebschle.

“That said, it’s not drawing a bleak picture and, even though it doesn’t have a perfect happy ending, it won’t leave anyone feeling like they don’t want to come here. The film will depict the harsh realities of our daily lives as well as the opportunities because even in the bleakest moments a little bit of light comes through.”

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