Local's book 'Vaselinetjie' made into film

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GARDEN ROUTE NEWS - The multi award winning book Vaselinetjie is now also an award winning film after it was named best movie of the year at the kykNET-Silwerskerm Awards on Saturday evening.

Vaselinetjie was written by Anoeschka von Meck, a former Knysna Plett Herald journalist, who has raked in numerous journalism awards during her career.

Von Meck worked at the Knysna office until December 2014 after moving to the Knysna-Plett Herald from its sister publication, George Herald, which she joined in 2010.

Apart from Vaselinetjie that she wrote in 2004, she is also the author of Annerkant die Longdrop, 1998 and Essie Honiball - Die Ontwaking, 2010.

Vaselinetjie director Corné van Rooyen and lead actress Marguerite van Eeden paid a visit to Knysna High School today, Monday 28 August, to promote their new film which will open in theatres on 22 September.

Van Rooyen told the learners that his idea to adapt Vaselinetjie into a film came to him 11 years ago, but it was only in 2014 when he approached television channel KykNET that his dream became a reality.

“Vaselinetjie took longer to write than any of the other films I have done. The screenplay alone took two years,” he said. He wrote the screenplay with his wife, René.

Vaselinetjie, an Afrikaans book, tells the story of Helena “Vaselinetjie” Bosman, played by Van Eeden.

In the early 90s this little white girl is raised by her loving coloured grandparents in a far-off little town in the Northern Cape. When welfare services find out Vaselinetjie is not their biological grandchild, they intervene and send her to a state run facility in Johannesburg.

It is a story about defining the meaning and origin of one’s identity and race in post-Apartheid South Africa.

Van Eeden received a special mention at the Silwerskerm Awards as an actress destined to achieve great things in her acting career.