Watch Alive in Joburg For Free

Simply A Masterpiece

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I hunted this short down after watching the trailer for District 9. And you have to hand it to Blonkampp for avoiding a plot-driven mess that this movie could have made. It's interesting to set the film in South Africa as well. The many perceptions throughout Alive in Joburg creates the questions needed to ask about these aliens that are genuinely terrifying in appearance. And the open-ended finale can be finally touched upon 4 years after Blonkampp began this. Does anyone think Blonkampp has the chops to handle Halo if District 9 works out? The short and the trailer would have you think so, but honestly, let's wait for August to continue that debate.

This impressive short takes a documentary form, but it's definitely no Christopher Guest style mockumentary. Instead it's got aliens—really realistic looking ones, with mech-style "bio-suits". Set in an imaginary South Africa where aliens have landed and taken up residence, Alive in Joburg poses as a documentary intent on examining how life has changed for residents there, interchanging interviews with realistic CG. The visuals are excellent and while the film's attempt to equate the aliens reception by locals with South Africa's Apartheid era are somewhat transparent, any attempt at social metaphor earns kudos from me.The director, Neill Blomkamp, is celebrated for his advertising work, and won for himself— based largely on this short I would presume—the directing gig for the new Halo film. I must say, based on this film, it looks like a truly inspired choice.Check out all of our weekly reviews at ShortoftheWeek.com

I saw this film online tonight and had no idea what it was. However, I was was quite impressed by this short movie due not only to its excellent use of a small budget (making it look pretty professional and expensive) but by the amazing plot. In this parallel world, there was no Black Aparteid in South Africa. Instead, aliens came to Earth looking for a home and the Aparteid system was created just for them. And also on this strange "bizarro" world, Blacks and Whites have much common ground, as they agree that the aliens are no good, lazy, smelly and worthless--just like the propaganda that was spouted for so long to excuse Apartheid in the REAL South Africa until only the last couple decades. The juxtaposition was great--especially when the viewers no doubt find themselves feeling terrible pity for these alien creatures--like more of us SHOULD have been feeling about Apartheid.

It is easy to see Neill Blomkamp's directorial skills in this short film, which runs kind of like a news broadcast documentary that gives a peek into the frightening situation in a South African town after some not so pleasant aliens have set up permanent residence there. It is a kind of journalistically objective look at how the lives of the local townspeople have been altered, mostly for the worse, by the arrival of the aliens. Visually, it is a stunningly effective film, especially with the mother ships floating just over the skyline, and the film is packed with one unsettling image after another. Having been signed on by Peter Jackson to film the highly anticipated screen adaptation of the wildly popular video game Halo, it is easy to see from this film why he was chosen despite having almost no directing experience at all to take on what will surely be a hugely popular film.