Cecile Mella

Fictional Cape Town
Cape Town has a large film industry. Most shoots are, in fact, advertisements for foreign companies selling everything from chewing gum to yoghurt. What is fascinating is that these companies turn locations in Cape Town into European, British or American scenes; so a characteristic wine farm is transformed into a Dutch homestead, or a Long Street cafe becomes a Parisian bistro for a day or two.

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Mella has spent 2009-10 on film sets, documenting the way the industry ‘semi-colonises’ slices of the city. The images capture the appealing artifice of the advertising world; the careful manufacturing of a sense of place. Glimpses of the real Cape Town (a characteristic mountain or building) can also be noticed by the attentive viewer. The images play with reality and fiction while portraying the area with humour and marvel.

To complement the work, Mella provides a collection of portraits of ‘extras’, people on set who do not have speaking parts but are there to add character and stroll around in the background. Some are local, and are able to comment on how Cape Town is stretched and squeezed into other personas; others are foreigners and talk about their impressions of the city and the film industry.

Cecile Mella
Born: Montpellier, France, 1983. Resides in Montpellier. Studied at University of Westminster, London and La Sorbonne, Paris. Awards and scholarships: 2008 (Runner-up) for Wanderlust’s Photo of the year & TNT’s Travel Photo; 2007 (Short listed) for Ian Parry scholarship.