April - The Long Take Film Club

29 April 2026

There's a moment in Dan Sallitt's Fourteen where you realise the film has been doing something to you that you didn't notice it was doing. Nothing announces itself. No score swells. No dramatic pivot. Just two women, a friendship across a decade, and the accumulating weight of small things left unsaid. By the time it lands, it lands properly.

That was the energy in the room at The Bioscope on Wednesday 29 April, when The Long Take Film Club returned for its April edition — a Dan Sallitt double bill: Fourteen (2019, 94 min) and Caterina (2019, 17 min).

The Bioscope courtyard filled early. Another sold-out screening. Since the club launched, we haven't had an empty seat — and there's something in that worth pausing on. Johannesburg has a serious appetite for serious cinema. It just needed a room and a reason to show up.

Deniz Sertkol framed the evening simply: two films, same year, same director, very different registers. Fourteen is long-form, sprawling across time, watching Mara observe her friend Jo with the helpless attention of someone who can see the wreckage coming and loves the person anyway. Caterina is short, concentrated, intimate — a study in desire and emotional exposure that packs more into seventeen minutes than most features manage in ninety.

After the screening, the courtyard conversation over pizza and beers went somewhere useful — as it always does when the film gives people something real to pull on. People talked about friendship and obligation, about what it means to witness someone falling apart and not know what your role is. Sallitt doesn't tell you. That's the point.

The Long Take Film Club exists precisely for this: films that deserve full attention, and a room of people willing to give it. No membership fee. No gatekeeping. Just a WhatsApp channel and the willingness to show up.

May's screening is coming. Watch this space.

Join us: whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbCA8n1CBtxBgDh6vg1F

Curated by Deniz Sertkol and François Smit. Monthly at The Bioscope, 44 Stanley Avenue, Milpark.