90' Film

Sara Blecher

“The Beautiful Game’s Beautiful Ghost” is a feature documentary that delves into the intertwined history of soccer, sacrifice, and the soul of South Africa through the lens of the Kaizer Chiefs football club. The film follows the journey, vision and life of Nene ‘the Lip’ Ewert, co-founder of the Kaiser Chiefs. Nene was tragically murdered in 1976.Ewert Nene, an innovating and trailblazing giant in the vanguard of African sport, and who bizarrely and unfairly remains unheralded in entertainment and untrumpeted in football.  He was born in 1933 into rural poverty in the backwaters of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. He was educated only up to third grade level but left to go to the Golden City with one wonderful attribute, his verbal swagger. It was a loquaciousness that earned him the nickname The Lip and many saw the parallels with a young Cassius Clay. The sheer audacity of his statements and his unshaken self-belief and confidence overcame any obstacles the big city and a country ruled by Apartheid could put in the way of a poor country boy. Where many observed insurmountable barriers, Nene saw virgin-snow opportunities.