Reflections on South Africa June 2016

This past June, we traveled to Cape Town, South Africa with our dear, talented friends Stormie and Dustin. Our goal was simple: we needed to get enough footage to create a trailer for a feature length documentary we plan to produce. However, the obstacles facing us were so large and so daunting we had no choice but to believe that in the end, God brought everything together because this is a story He wants told. Just to give you an idea, some of our obstacles involved driving a rental car in a foreign country for the first time, renting camera equipment that if lost or stolen would take our entire lives to pay back, and getting clearance to film inside one of the most notorious prisons in South Africa. Miraculously, we drove our rental van safely (or perhaps I should say without incident), we managed to keep tabs on all of our rental gear for the whole week, and we were granted access to exactly what we needed to film inside the prison walls. We had to figure out our own meals, find our way around using an old-school GPS unit, and cart 400+ pounds of hollywood grade camera equipment in and out of a prison each day. Somehow, all of those pieces fell into place as well. 

It was our first time to invest so much and risk so much for a passion project, but from the beginning, this whole thing has just felt right. Jonathan Clayton, our main character, is one of those magnetic people who you can just sense has something special about him. He spent 3 years and 14 days incarcerated in Pollsmoor prison himself, and since then has spent every day of his life ministering to and changing the lives of fellow inmates. Seeing his Restorative Justice program firsthand is a sight to behold. 

Months later, our trailer is complete. The website is live. We're just waiting to see what God does next. You can check it out here.

 

Allan and Dustin interviewing a woman in the Lavender Hill neighborhood of Cape Town, a government housing project where many inmates at Pollsmoor grew up. 

Allan and Dustin interviewing a woman in the Lavender Hill neighborhood of Cape Town, a government housing project where many inmates at Pollsmoor grew up.