VIDEO: A trip down memory lane – Garden Route (1960)

Media release from the first screening in 50 years, which took place on board the Paddle Cruiser in Knysna – the star of the movie, Carol (Malan) Sachs, had never even seen the film before that day!

Garden Route’s First Promotional Movie Revived on DVD In 1960 (or was it 1961? – the people involved can’t quite remember).

William Smith wrote, produced, and directed what was probably the Garden Route’s first promotional movie – a 40-minute-long piece about a young couple who meet for a holiday in Knysna and Wilderness.

The film starred Carol Malan (now Sachs) and Pieter Snyman, and when, at a recent tourism function, Carol met William again after all these years, she decided to ask him whether he still had a copy of the movie – because she’d never seen it.

“Having left the Garden Route to attend college shortly after the shooting was complete, I decided to go and find the movie, which once found we had digitised by AV Transfers in Cape Town. However, the soundtrack had deteriorated, so we needed to re-record it,” explains William.

“In those days, remember, we were pioneering movies, and anything with audio had to go onto a magnetic strip. So we shot the footage on 16 mm; since we had no money for a copy, we fed the film through a camera, cut it up, spliced it, and this became the master – and to put the sound on we had to use a magnetic strip.

“When we found the old film’s spool, we found that the picture quality had deteriorated and that the sound was gone. So we had to go back, listen carefully to what was said, copy it down, and I re-recorded the commentary in the studio,” said William.

The result has now been published on DVD, and William and his wife, Jenny, invited forty friends – many of whom had been living in Knysna at the time when the movie was made – to view it on board the Featherbed Company’s Paddle Cruiser on the 1st of December.

Carol who now runs Treehaven Self Catering Accommodation in Plett, and spends most of her time working as an artist had the pleasure of watching the footage for the very first time. “It was lovely,” she said afterward. “I still don’t remember much, but Pieter doesn’t remember much either, so I’m not that doddering.

“The period was an important time of my life, moving forward as an adult, and it was lovely seeing myself in that situation – and to see the Garden Route as she was. I still feel that I live in Paradise, and Paradise will remain Paradise.”

Pieter Snyman, a retired airline pilot who resides in Sedgefield, said, “It was stunning to see myself so young. What really struck me was the openness of the area. You look on The Heads and there was hardly anything there!”

More information: YouTube video interviews with Carol, Piet & William https://youtu.be/4BlA1OpjPmo

The star of the movie – Carol (Malan) Sachs – had never even seen it before that day! See an interview with her: https://youtu.be/4BlA1OpjPmo)

Garden Route (1960) was produced and filmed by William Smith and starred Carol Malan and Pieter Snyman. The soundtrack was re-recorded in 2010 by William (the original print was in very poor condition) and was uploaded to YouTube with the permission of William Smith.