Attenborough to film the life of Steve Biko

Press, 31 January 1986, Page 17

Attenborough to film the life of Steve Biko

The 1980 s have so far been pretty good to Richard Attenborough, at least in his manifestation as a film-maker, for which he once said that he did not have a wholly natural talent. “Gandhi” was at long last completed, and positively festooned with awards worldwide. Few believed he would ever manage to finance it, or that enough people would want to see it if he did.

Then, amid much eyebrow raising, Attenborough embarked upon “A Chorus Line”, an expensive musical no-one much thought would translate from stage to screen. No equivalent film, at any rate, has been a success for two decades, if you discount Jim Sherman’s “Rocky Horror Show”. But it looks as if “A Chorus Line” will send a chorus line of money men laughing all the way to the bank. It made more money in its first two weeks in Japan, the world’s second largest single market, than “Gandhi” gathered durings its entire run there. And lousy reviews from Vincent Canby of the “New York Times” and “Time Magazine” have not prevented it clocking up some $2O million so far in America. Nothing seems likely to stop the snowball now.

But if you think Attenborough

can take the opportunity to wind down a little - he is, after all, 63 - then you don’t know the man. He is a self-confessed workaholic, Britain’s answer to “The ATeam" as far as perpetual motion is concerned. In April/ May he will embark on another dangerous project. It is at the moment simply called Biko. The story of Steve Biko, the young African leader cruelly put to death by the South African Security Police.

The film will be shot in Zimbabwe at a cost of some $34 million and has not yet been cast. But what is already almost certain is that Biko, who died in his late twenties, will have to be played by a relatively unknown black actor because of his youth. The idea of making a film on the general subject of South Africa and apartheid first came to Attenborough when he met Donald Woods, the exiled South African newspaper editor, who gave him two books to read - his own biography and a biography of Biko, of whom he was a close friend.

Since then he has been on a controversial private visit to South Africa, where he met Mrs Winnie Mandela and had a hatchet job done on him by a South African television crew who followed him secretly to her

They said “Gandhi” could not be made and that an Englishman had no business directing “A Chorus Line.” Richard Attenborough did both. He talks to DEREK MALCOLM, of the “Guardian,” about the riskiest project he has yet undertaken — a film about the life and death of Steve Biko.

township house. That, above all, made him determined to tell Biko’s story, and talks with Biko’s widow and Oliver Tambo, of the African National Congress, confirmed that his instincts were right. “I have to say that the blatant dishonesty of the South African television programme concentrated my mind wonderfully. But also that I do come from a radical background and was taught by my father that, if you think something is wrong, you don’t keep quiet .. .you shout about it. And racism has got to be one of the world’s greatest evils.

“Biko won’t attempt to be a complete biography. But it will be the story -of the friendship that developed between Biko and his family and Donald Woods and his. I hope it won’t be a depressing story, even though it ended in tragedy, because it is about white people and black people working towards the same ends. It is intended to be a message of hope, not despair, though I am well aware that there’s not much hope to be had in South Africa at the moment.

“Some people didn't think I should have gone to South Africa at all. But I’m glad I did. It showed me the true nature of the regime, and also that there are