By Annette Hinkle
When Stockholm-based filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul set off for South Africa in 2006 in search of a few good segments for Swedish television, he wasn’t expecting to find a Cinderella story worthy of a feature length documentary.
Yet “Searching for Sugarman” is exactly that. It’s a film about the youthful hopes of an oppressed nation which were embodied in the music of a long-lost musician from a world away. It’s a tale that spans two continents and more than three decades.
And it hinges on nothing short of a resurrection.
It’s certainly not the story Bendjelloul expected to find when he set out on his journey.
“I only conceived of the idea to be a TV thing, a seven minute story,” says Bendjelloul. “Then I realized I can’t even summarize it in seven minutes — even if I speak quickly.”
“In reality it sounded like it had been scripted by a screenwriter,” confesses Bendjelloul who first heard the story from Stephen “Sugar” Segerman in Cape Town — a detective of sorts who uncovered a mystery. “It was too unbelievable to be true.”
The documentary won two awards at the Sundance Film Festival and has since been picked up by Sony Pictures Classics. It opens at 85 theaters in New York and Los Angeles later this month. But first, it comes to East Hampton.
This Friday, “Searching for Sugarman” kicks off the SummerDocs series hosted by Alec Baldwin at Guild Hall in conjunction with the Hamptons International Film Festival. The screening includes a conversation between Bendjelloul and Baldwin about the making of the film.
“Searching for Sugarman” is the story of Sixto Diaz Rodriguez, a Mexican-American singer/songwriter from Michigan who was discovered in a Detroit bar in the late 1960s by two celebrated record producers. Because of his powerful lyrics and soulful melodies, they saw Rodriguez as the Chicano Bob Dylan and cut an album with him, “Cold Fact,” which was well-received by critics but a commercial disaster.
“These producers had worked with Marvin Gaye and the Temptations. They knew he would be massive,” says Bendjelloul. “But his album didn’t sell anything, and didn’t even make the Billboard Top 100.”
Rodriguez quickly sank back into obscurity. But his music did not.
A bootleg copy of “Cold Fact” found its way to South Africa in the early 1970s just as the Apartheid regime was strengthening its hold on the black population. The music of Rodriguez, as he was simply known, was embraced by legions of young liberal whites opposed to Apartheid and his lyrics spoke to the issues of oppression, inequality and disenfranchisement that many young people felt at the time.
“In South Africa where it played on the radio it was huge,” says Bendjelloul. “If you listen to the album, it makes sense. He was the only mainstream artist who had lyrics with a strong political context about the system and the fall that was soon to come.”
Though Rodriguez, who actually cut two albums in his short career (“Coming From Reality” followed in in 1971), wrote songs based on his experiences living in inner-city Detroit, they struck a chord in South Africa. Copies of his albums were pressed and passed around, and despite eventually being banned for radio play by the government, Rodriguez’s music only grew in popularity among the white resistance and helped build the anti-Apartheid movement.
“Rodriguez was as famous as the Stones and the Doors in South Africa,” says Bendjelloul. “It was a very strange thing. He was famous, but they knew nothing of him there. The only thing they knew was he was dead. But they were not sure how he died. Some said he shot himself or burned himself to death onstage. Others said he overdosed.”
“This detective had wanted to know how he died,” recalls Bendjelloul of his meeting with Segerman. “They didn’t know his real name or where he came from, and they were looking for clues in his lyrics. It was like a crossword puzzle which they deciphered for geographic references.”
“One of those references was to Dearborn, which led the detective to Michigan where they found Rodriguez’s producer after 28 years,” adds Bendjelloul. “When they asked how he had died, they got a shock.”
That’s because Rodriguez wasn’t dead. In fact, in the years since his recording career had fizzled he had been living a simple life in Detroit as a construction worker. Rodriguez’s popularity as a musician in South Africa came as a complete surprise to him.
“He had no idea,” says Bendjelloul. “He had made two albums, the second met the same destiny as the first, so he started working at hard manual labor. He lived in poor conditions, not knowing he was a superstar in South Africa until almost 30 years later.”
In 1998, he went on tour in South Africa where he was met by thousands of adoring fans he never knew he had.
“He played sold out stadiums in ‘98,” says Bendjelloul. “He was a superstar. A few times he forgot the lyrics, but the thousands of people there knew the lyrics better than he did.”
“In America he had never played for more than few hundred people,” he adds.
Though his work on “Searching for Sugarman” (which takes its name from Rodriguez’s most well-known song) had led Bendjelloul to producers, musicians and fans who shared memories of the musician, it wasn’t until 2008 that he traveled to Detroit to meet Rodriguez in person. By that point, he wasn’t sure what to expect.
“When I came to America I had heard so much conflicting information,” he says. “I was so nervous and inspired to meet this guy. I showed him the interviews of these producers he had worked with. He didn’t know they even remembered him. For him it was overwhelming.”
When asked how Rodriguez felt about the role his music played in the anti-Apartheid movement, Bendjelloul responds, “He’s a shy guy and still has an air of mystery around him. He doesn’t talk about his feelings.”
“But he does believe in changing the system. He’s a very political man who cares very much and ran for mayor a few times,” adds Bendjelloul. “It does make sense that he had a political impact. He’s very much a political artist.”
For his part, though he set out to find a simple story that could be told in seven minutes, in the end Bendjelloul is happy that the process of making “Searching for Sugarman” took him where it did.
“It’s a beautiful story and very inspirational,” he says. “It’s a feel good movie with a great ending — and the kind of story no one has seen in American film.”
Bendjelloul feels the documentary also embodies the role music can play in changing societies — a theme as relevant today in the era of the Arab Spring as it was during the counter-cultural movements of the 1960s. Though American audiences apparently weren’t quite ready for Rodriguez (he notes musicians of Mexican heritage were largely expected to still embody the music of mariachi bands at the time) other parts of the world were.
“That’s always the role of the artist,” he says. “Young people don’t care about politicians, but they do listen to music and listen to lyrics. Music has amazing power over people. They form societies over it. It can guide people and show them what is morally right.”
The screening of “Searching for Sugarman” begins at 7 p.m. on Friday, July 6 at Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater, 158 Main Street, East Hampton. A discussion with director Malik Bendjelloul and Alec Baldwin follows. Admission is $22 ($20 for Guild Hall members). A limited number of $100 VIP Reception tickets are also available and include an after party at c/o The Maidstone in East Hampton. The screening is offered in partnership with the Hamptons International Film Festival. Call 324-4050 for details.
