Cape Town Director Corrals Kevin Spacey's Vote

South African filmmaker Alan Shelley is no stranger to awards. While at the CityVarsity School of Film and Creative Arts, his one-minute PSA Moses won six VUKA! prizes, including Best Direction and Best Editing, while his graduate film Harold & Nina was awarded a South African Film and Television Award (SAFTA) for Best Student Film. So is it really any surprise that Shelley is the South African winner of Trigger Street's Jameson First Shot Short Film contest?

The 26-year-old will soon be flying to LA to direct his script Spirit of the Denture, about a workaholic dentist who is visited by a pirate. Like the other two winners from Russia and the U.S., he will have the luxury of Spacey as a leading man, presumably in this case for the role of the dentist.



There's some really nifty graphical and split-screen stuff going on in Harold & Nina, above. Not to mention a lot of quick-cut hyper close-ups. On the surface, Shelley appears to have a little bit of one-time USC phenom Phil Joanou in him.  His Moses PSA, done for the St. Kizit Children's Programme, is equally clever. Although the set-up is entirely biblical, the punchline is classic 21st century.



Update - 05/13/12: Spacey was in Johannesburg this weekend for the Saturday May 12th red carpet premiere of Spirit of the Denture. Here's the trailer: