Jenna Bass


Jenna Cato Bass is a South African film director, screenwriter, and author. She has written short stories under the pseudonym Constance Myburgh, one of which was shortlisted for the 2012 Caine Prize.

Early life

Bass was born in London, England and grew up in South Africa. She practiced magic at the College of Magic. She went onto graduate from the Cape Town campus of AFDA, The School for the Creative Economy.

Career

In 2011 Bass founded Jungle Jim, a genre fiction magazine. Issue 6 featured her noir detective story 'Hunter Emmanuel', featuring an investigation into a dismembered prostitute. The story was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2012.
Bass's first feature film, Love the One You Love, was shot on a 'nano-budget' using hand-held consumer cameras and a partly improvised script. The film told the story of a sex phone operator negotiating her relationship with her boyfriend and considering a move to Korea. The film won Best South African Feature Film at the 2014 Durban International Film Festival.
High Fantasy is a satirical thriller about a group of young travellers who mysteriously exchange their bodies on a camping trip. Shot on iPhones, using improvisation, the film explores "the messy tangle of race, class and gender identity in modern-day South Africa."
Flatland, a woman led "South African kitsch-western genre mashup", was shot on a larger budget. Natalie and Poppie flee their rural town on horseback after Natalie murders the local pastor on her wedding night. Detective Beauty Cuba is determined not to let them get away. It was chosen as the opening film in the 2019 Berlinale Panorama.
Mlungu Wam is a horror-cum-psychological thriller set in the upper-class, suburban and mostly white suburb of Constantia, Cape Town. Tsidi and her daughter move in with Tsidi's mother, Mavis, who is a live-in domestic worker for an aged, invalid white woman. The film explores the contentious and intersecting issues of race, land rights and slavery in South Africa.

Works

Short stories

Bass first started using a pseudonym, Constance Myburgh, in 2011 when publishing stories in her literary magazine, Jungle Jim, to keep her author's profile separate from her role as a screenwriter in the film industry.
  • "A Hole in the Ground"
  • "Hunter Emmanuel" Shortlisted for the Caine Prize in 2012.

    Filmography