This was my second viewing of the film at the National Media
Museum followed by a Q & A with three members from the Peace Department at
Bradford University. I think there were about fifty members in the audience,
some students from the Peace Department. There was half-an-hour after the
screening for the discussion, which proved to be a little short for the
occasion.
Revisiting the film enabled me to sort out some of my
responses to it presentation of archive material and the use of the writings of
Franz Fanon to provide a set of meanings to the struggles illustrated in the
film footage. Apart from an introduction in 1.85:1 the archive material was all
in its proper ratio of 1.37:1. This illustrated a respect for the archive
material which seems increasingly rare in contemporary documentary. Göran
Olsson, the director, previous film was The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975: he
clearly has a particular interest in such political discourses. The BBFC rated
the film 15 with the comment ‘strong images of real injury and dead bodies’.
This is the case. One haunting image is of a mother and child, both of whom
have lost a limb from colonial violence.
The introduction by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak still seemed
to me to place incorrect emphasis on the ideas in Fanon’s writing. She did
emphasise the way that Fanon’s position on violence has been distorted. He does
not advocate violence per se but argues that:
Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed
with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only
yield when confronted with greater violence.
And I did note that Spivak used the phrase ‘supposed
post-colonial’, which is the way I think this concept should be treated.
However Spivak also makes the comment re ‘rape’ that this type of violence
against women is found both in colonial and anti-colonial movements. I’m am
sure she could quote examples of both, but in the unqualified manner that she
delivered it the phrase is both a misnomer and ignores Fanon’s treatment of
anti-colonial violence. It struck me even more forcibly this time that the
introduction is at odds with the treatment in the main body of the film: there
are a number of sequences in vision and sound of women members of the
liberation movements. This is a rather different treatment of the
contradictions involved in gender. I also noted that the English commentary is
spoken by an Afro-American, and the subtitles into English use US spelling. I
rather suspect that the introduction is an ‘add-on’. There are various language
versions of the film available and it seems that each version uses a different
person to provide the commentary.
Decolonisation uses film of the MPLA in Angola.
Indifference uses mainly an interview with an activist
imprisoned in Rhodesia / Zimbabwe by the colonialist. Also uses footage from
Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, mainly of the white settlers.
A World Cut in Two includes an interview with Robert Mugabe
of ZANU, apparently in the interim between the settlement with the British
Government and the inauguration of black majority rule. This interview was a
point that was bought up several times in the Q & A. But Fanon was under no
illusions about the pitfalls of notional independence: he writes
The apotheosis of independence is transformed into the curse
of independence and the colonial power through its immense resources of
coercion condemns the young nation to regression.
Uses Swedish film footage from 1966 of a strike involving
Lamco in Liberia The film exposes the brutal treatment of the union activist by
the firm with the co-operation of the black ruling class and President Tubman.
At one point, a family including a pregnant woman is dumped in the bush and
even made to sign a receipt for the transportation.That Poverty of Spirit
offers a portrait of the white settlers in Tanzania in the 1960S. Their ‘care’
of the colonised natives includes the building of a church – before any
schools, hospitals or other basic necessities.The FIAT G96 is set among Frelimo
in Mozambique in 1972. The title is explained when a guerrilla leader talks
about how the colonial military use the plane against the liberation fighters.
More interesting are sequences when women fighters talk directly to camera
about their motivation and contribution to the struggle, ending with an armed
woman who states ‘we are on the same level as men.’The women also sing a song
which runs over footage of guerrillas in the jungle. Unfortunately this and
another song are not translated.Defeat shows Portuguese colonial military
suffering sets back against the liberation fighters in Guinea-Bissau. There is
also footage of the leader Amilcar Cabral at a liberation event with both armed
men and women.
Raw Material addresses tine underlying social relations of
exploitation, first by the capitalist expropriation of resources and then by
the reduction of the colonial population to as market for colonial exports. As
Fanon wrote, ‘Europe was a creation of the Third World`. There follows a
To achieve this, the European peoples must first decide to
wake up and shake themselves, use their brains, and stop playing the stupid
game of the Sleeping Beauty.
What struck me on this second viewing was how the visuals in
the film not only illustrates but also suggestively extends the analysis of the
film. I think this is deliberate. Certainly it seemed to me to raise issues of
gender, class and transformation which are central to the project propagandised
by Fanon. The craft with which the archive material has been edited together,
along with the commentary and the judicious use of non-diegetic music is
impressive. And one point need Fanon’s actual writings needs to be made: whilst
he uses male nouns and pronouns extensively he also writes:
In an under-developed country every effort is made to
mobilize men and women as quickly as possible; it must guard against the danger
of perpetuating feudal tradition which holds sacred the superiority of the
masculine element over the feminine. Women will have exactly the same place as
men, not in the clauses of the constitution but in the life of every day: in the
factory, at school and in the parliament.
I found the Q&A following the screening somewhat
frustrating. This was partly because I had serious issues with the comments
made about Fanon and his writings. But it was also due to the format. David
Francis chaired the discussion, fairly effectively I thought. However the form
was three questions from the audience followed by comments by the three panel
members. David Francis managed to be concise in his comments and he struck me
as having the fullest command of the writings of Fanon. Both Catherine Howard
and Owen Greene talked at length and usually with a certain amount of padding.
Howard was preoccupied with the issue of violence and I did not think she had
really grasped Fanon’s line on its use. Greene did offer some support for the
armed struggle but he did tend to pacifism. He also remarked that it was a
considerable time since he had read Fanon. I have to say that I immediately
commenced re-reading The Wretched of the Earth after the first screening: and continuing
my reading was part of my preparation for this event.
In fact I was first out the block and I suggested that the
film only offered a partial view of Fanon’s writings and also queried where the
Introduction fitted into the film. On the latter point David Francis suggested
that the documentary mode tended to such ad hoc structures. I have to say that
I disagree with this. To take to important documentary filmmakers, Chris Marker
and Alain Resnais, their films are carefully structured and this is one of
their merits. I thought once we had finished the Introduction Concerning
Violence was a very carefully constructed film.
Other members made points or asked questions. One black
student suggested that more African faces on the panel would be an improvement.
My memory is that the actual questions tended to agree with the pacifist tone
of the panel members. Apart from David Francis the panel members tended to
restate their criticisms of Fanon. Greene suggested that changes in the world
meant Fanon’s writings needed reviewing. Howard spoke at length about violence
in post-colonial Africa. Francis did add that neo-colonial was a more accurate
representation than ‘post-colonial’.
Towards the ending there were several longer contributions
from audience members that raised critical points on the discussion. I returned
to emphasise how Fanon’s discussion of violence has to be seen in the context
of national liberation struggles: that he also writes extensively about
culture: and that an important omission in the film is the question of the
class contradictions within the anti-colonial movement and how that impacts on
decolonization. The interviews in the film with Robert Mugabe, President Tubman
and Thomas Sankara all provided relevant material for such comment.
A woman queried the idea of the post-colonial referencing in
particular the case of Palestine. And a man made similar comments referencing
the imperialist actions in Iraq. As the Panel members geared up for comment the
‘voice of god’, [actually the projectionist] bought proceedings to a close. The
audience for the next screening were waiting at the door.
The cinema programme at the National Media Museum is now run
by the Picture House Company. They appear to have a more efficient service. The
programme looks less varied than before the changeover, but it is positive that
they have continued with events like this screening and Q & A., We could
have done with more time, and I think a brief introduction before the film
would have be better. As it was we got adverts and trailers.
Regarding the film and the discussion, this was a rather
academic exercise. I sympathised with the young black student, but I would have
liked to see one panel member who was a committed proponent of the political
line in The Wretched of the Earth.
Despite comments to the contrary, a cursory glance round the world scene
– Palestine, Cuba, the anniversary recently of Bhopal … – show that Fanon’s
work remains as relevant as ever. I had forgotten, not just how powerful are
the politics of Fanon’s book, but with what commitment and elan he writes about
the struggle of the oppressed peoples and nations. In paperback The Wretched of
the Earth is a mere 250 pages. It sets out not just a path for national
liberation but in The Pitfalls of National Consciousness provides an analysis
that explains the type of problems that so occupied Catherine Howard. On
National Culture provides the ideas that are central to
A black township in 1976.
I recently saw Mandela Long Walk to Freedom (Republic of
South Africa, 2013). The film features the black townships during the Apartheid
era, but mainly as a backdrop to the biopic of the famous leader. The political
complexities of these black ghettos and of the wider struggle in which they
played a leading role were missing from the film. However, the film falls into
a long and varied series of treatments of these now iconic settings. The
article below was written in 1995, the point at which history and the new
Mandela film enter a new phase for Southern Africa. I have added this
introduction and a final coda.
Movies and the black townships under Apartheid.
A discourse can be defined as a mode of speech, which has
evolved to express the shared human activities of a community of people.
Discourses are ideological, expressing the dominant or consensus values found
in the community that uses them. This article will examine how differing filmic
discourses responded to a particular political and social situation – township
life under the Apartheid State in South Africa.
There have been a number of films that represent in some way
the life of black people in these townships. Some were produced outside South
Africa and gave an outsider’s comment; some came from within and expressed, as
far as they were able, an indigenous voice. The historical events they
represented were intrinsically related to the development of South African
capitalism and the organisation of class divisions, largely along lines of
racial classification. This included specialised jerry-built housing for black
workers. Such housing dated back to the gold and diamond mine exploitation of
the nineteenth century. Then, emerging capital used liquor both as a social
opiate and an additional profit margin, a phenomenon to be repeated in the new
townships of the twentieth century. (Onselen 1976)
In the late 1940s townships expanded under the contradictory
pressures of demand for black labour and pressures for separation of the
working class black majority population. This led to the erection of Apartheid
from 1948. These concentrations of black people, poverty, social deprivation,
crime and dissent have provided a dramatic environment for feature films. Some
merely use Southern Africa as an exotic backdrop, a good example is Gold
(1974). This British film features sabotage in a South African gold mine. The
black characters provide material for displaying the liberal sentiments of the
hero, Rod Slater (Roger Moore), and an act of self-sacrifice at the film’s
climax. However we never see the actual life of the black miners, only a Zulu
dance and a Christmas football match.
Other films do take a closer look at black characters. These
include Hollywood and British movies, and films made in South Africa. Of the
latter, a large number have never been seen in Britain, a few only on video or
Satellite TV. However, those films available, with their disparate sources –
movie moguls, white liberals, exploitation cinema and black activists – provide
an interesting set of variations on this one theme.
Cry the beloved Country (1951)
One of the first films to depict the new black township
life, Cry the Beloved Country was an adaptation of the novel by Alan Paton, a
white liberal South African. Published in 1947, it tells the story of a black
father who travels from the countryside to Johannesburg to search for his son.
Paton’s book uses the search structure to draw both a picture of the appalling
living conditions for black people and the mixed responses of whites. Some are
concerned and anxious for improvement, others fearful and demanding even
greater separation.
The film presents us with two fathers and sons: Stephen
Kumalo, the black minister, and his son Absalom who lives in a shanty town and
drifts into crime, and James Jarvis, white farmer and his son Arthur, a young
engineer who lives with his family in the white suburbs. Arthur (unlike his
father) argues for improvements in the treatment of black people, supporting
such activities as youth clubs. In the book Arthur appears only as a victim of
a shooting by black housebreakers, and in the memories of him among his family
and friends. It is Absalom who shoots Arthur, and the moral of the book is in
the responses of the two fathers to this crime. At the novel’s end, back in
rural Ixopo, each father cares for his grandson, reminder of the lost son, but
also a harbinger for the future. James Jarvis, having undergone a conversion in
attitude, supports the work of the church and the agriculture of the black
village. This is a message of black and white harmony and co-operation, but also
of white paternalism.
The 1951 film was co-produced by Zoltan Korda with Alan
Paton, who also wrote the screenplay. While the main narrative and much of the
dialogue are transferred directly from the book, there are significant changes.
Whereas the book first presents the story of Stephen and his search, with the
white family’s story following in part two, the film has integrated then into
one chronological story. So while the book presents Kumalo’s discovery of his
son’s crime as the end of his search, in the film the murder scene is followed
directly by the breaking of the news to the white parents. Thus theirs is the
first, significant, grief. This is a privileging of white characters, which is
dominant in films set amongst black people. The film does still include long
sequences devoted solely to black life and action. And Stephen Kumalo’s trauma
is given a certain force by receiving almost the entire sparse musical
accompaniment in the film.
In this, and other ways, the film draws attention to the
lack of autonomy in black lives. However, it unthinkingly reinforces this lack
in the privileging of a white discourse. A key scene is where Stephen, angry
and grief stricken, vents his feelings about his son’s crime. It is the white
Father Vincent (Geoffrey Keen) who calms him and reminds him of the efficacy of
prayer, rather than the black Theophilus Msimangu (Sidney Poitier). Stephen’s
brother John also lives in Johannesburg, a successful carpenter. In the book he
is a black politician, discredited because of his opportunism. This political
portrait is missing in the film. However, he is still discredited, after
shaking his hand Msimangu asks, “where can I wash my hands?” This is part of
the film’s representation with a range of good and bad black characters. But
there are really no bad white characters, apart from expressions of
prejudice.Cry Freedom
The Wilby Conspiracy (1974), Cry Freedom (1987)
In the intervening decades several films made in the UK and
Hollywood have featured black townships. In 1974 United Artists distributed The
Wilby Conspiracy, directed by Ralph Nelson from a novel by Peter Driscoll. Like
his film Soldier Blue (1969), this is a morality play, dramatising the
oppression of black people. In a classic scenario we have a white mining engineer,
Jim Keogh (Michael Caine), literally tied to black activist Shack Twala (Sidney
Poitier again). They journey through the underworld of black townships pursued
by Major Horn of State Security (Nicol Williamson). The positive ending hinges
on two scenes. One showing the conversion in attitude by Keogh, who expresses
his support for the black activist by shooting Major Horn in the final
confrontation. However this confrontation only occurs because black villagers,
led by Shack, have downed Horn’s helicopter. The latter scene is an example of
black action rarely seen in liberal films. The fact that it is villagers rather
than township people may be an oblique comment on the way these institutions
are seen to disempower black residents.
Something of the same unease with black township life is
seen in Cry Freedom (1987). the film version of Donald Woods’ account of his
friendship with black consciousness leader, Steve Biko. Our visits to the black
townships are always in the company of one of the white characters. At the
start of the film a raid illustrates the massive police violence against black
people. Later Steve Biko takes Woods to see the actual townships. A black
activist tells him, “before you arrived, many generations ago we had our own
culture. We had many, many villages – small, everyone known to everyone.” The
implicit critique of the townships is emphasised in the third example. As Woods
carries his book about Biko to freedom he recalls the Soweto school student
uprising and resultant massacre.* This powerful and brutal scene shows the
carnage wreaked by the white state security. The film ends with Woods and
family flying to freedom in the west whilst a roll call of names shows the
black activists dead or imprisoned. Whatever its liberal motivation, the film
reinforces ideas of whites rescuing black people, rather incongruous in a film
supposedly dedicated to the life of a black consciousness leader, who
emphasised autonomy and self-action.
The same problematic can be seen in subsequent mainstream
forays into South Africa. A Dry White Season, (1989) despite a black director
(Euzhan Palcy), is centrally from the white perspective. The discourse in these
films reflects certain ideological and political strands in western thought. It
is also a manifestation of traits and motifs that are typical of Hollywood. All
the films have recognisable melodramatic traits; they follow predictable
patterns of story and continuity; and they are built round easily identified
`star’ actors and actresses. Thus there is a marriage between intellectual and
cinematic discourses that are imposed on the experiences of black people
fictionalised for the purposes of the film story.
Racist parallels can be seen operating between such western
liberal products and the mainstream, white-dominated cinema in South Africa.
Its products go back to the days of silent film. As a market mainly dominated
by Hollywood, few of these films have been seen in the west. In his book, Keyan
Tomaselli (1989) describes and discusses these films. He notes a cycle of “back
to the homelands” films, which “usually begin with the hero, a well-dressed
urbanite carrying a suitcase on his way ‘home’… Once ‘back’ from the city, the
ex-migrant workers progressively discard their Western urban ways and
Ire-adapt’ to tribal life, wearing skins and beads.” One can see here both
racist attitudes about the `natural savagery’ of black people, and a suppressed
desire for them to go back, back being elsewhere, anywhere else. These
attitudes cross over with the western liberal films, which tend to privilege
rural life, as more moral and less corrupting.
Friends (1994)
Several independent films offer something different. The
most recent, Friends, is from Film on Four. It comes up to date with the
freeing of Nelson Mandela from jail and the new elections. The story tells of
the friendship of three women, a white liberal, a white Afrikaans and a black
woman. It moves from their graduation from university in 1985 up to the recent
free elections in 1994. The central position of women characters is a
refreshing change. Cry Freedom, for example, downplays the role of Wendy Woods
in recognising the significance of ‘black consciousness’. (Farrar 1987) Friends
also grapples with the question of the division amongst whites between English-speaking
and Afrikaans. In most western films the Afrikaners are racist villains, the
only liberals are English-speaking. This film concentrates on the white liberal
who embraces violent action in the anti-apartheid struggle and much of the film
is about the agonies of the conscience-smitten whites. However, as the movie
nears the present the black presence grows. At the end the three women re-unite
in a black township, a symbol of the centre of the new South Africa, and a rare
positive image for these townships.
Sarafina (1982), Cry the Beloved Country (1995)
An indigenous cinema subsidised by the State has developed
in South Africa since the sixties. This enabled the mainstream film to survive,
but also supported films aimed directly at black audiences.
“The van der Merwes… are the first family of South Africa’s
made-for-blacks film industry, having cranked out more than 200 between them
since Tonie’s first productions in the early Seventies. In fact, it is not
difficult to make 100 of these films in seven years. Preparation is minimal.
Scripts are the barest synopses, left to the actors’ improvisational skills.
Shooting time varies from two to ten days, editing never more than two. Much of
the footage is pinched from earlier features… “The blacks aren’t fussy,” says
Gary van der Merwe. “Most of our audiences are rural. Some of these people have
seen a motor car before, let alone a movie. They’ll take anything you give
them.” Their work – like that of the entire local film industry that produces
knock-off black-exploitation films – is bankrolled by the South African
government through a byzantine system of subsidies. (Powell, Fisher)
This and the black audiences have created white,
multi-millionaire film producers. The first black film producer (`coloured’ in Apartheid-speak)
was Anant Singh: In 1984 he teamed up with young white director, Darrell Roodt,
to make a film that treated directly the oppression of black people in the
countryside, Place of Weeping. Singh and Roodt have continued with a series of
critical films, most famously Sarafina, a film adaptation of a stage musical.
It was written by black African activist Mbongeni Ngema and originally
performed outside South Africa in New York.
The film is set in Soweto during the school student
rebellions of the mid-1980s. In the film the musical numbers sit uneasily with
a film drama, which provides a view of the township experience through the eyes
of school students. There is also a mismatch between the personal story of
Sarafina (Leleti Khumalo) and the more collective sequences depicting the
suppression, imprisonment and torture of the rebellious school students. There
are still many powerful and moving sequences in the film. At its centre is
Sarafina’s admiration for Nelson Mandela and her politically conscious teacher,
Mary Masombuka (Whoopi Goldberg) who practises resistance but who says “don’t
ask me to kill”. Sarafina is imprisoned after a school rebellion and an
execution of a black policeman.
The film ends as Sarafina is released from prison and visits
her mother Angelina (Miriam Makeba), a domestic servant with an affluent white
family. She tells her mother, who she had previously criticised as subservient,
“I was a stupid child…”. Later she throws away a gun she has been hiding into a
marshy lake, a familiar motif from films where the hero/heroine forsakes
violence for peace. The final sequence sees her performing `Freedom is coming’
as she imagines the release from prison of Nelson Mandela. Made after Mandela’s
release from prison in 1992, the film emphasises a non-violent response to
apartheid violence of that period. Exemplified by the Truth and Reconciliation
process.
This discourse re-appears in Singh and Roodt’s more recent
project. Their 1995 film Cry the Beloved Country, is the first film to emerge
from the new South Africa. In going back to the fifty year old classic they
consciously aimed to dramatise a message of reconciliation between black and
white (see Miramax Press Pack, 1995). So, for example, the scenes of anger in
the earlier version, such as Stephen’s outburst over his son, are missing. The
film, shot in colour and modern wide screen, has a similar narrative to the
1951 version. The white father, James Jarvis (Richard Harris), is seen early in
the film at the railway station as Stephen Kumalo, the black father, leaves for
Johannesburg. Jarvis is meeting his daughter-in-law and grandson who are
visiting his farm. It is there that the news of Arthur Jarvis’ death is broken
to the father and to the audience. This is part of the film’s emphasising of
the black/white contradictions, with less time devoted to the search of Kumalo
for his son. As in the 1951 version this gives greater prominence to the white
discourse, especially as the depiction of white prejudice is even more muted
than in the book.
The black discourse is strengthened by the use of a
voice-over by Stephen Kumalo, as he comments on South Africa and white racism.
In the book and 1951 film the message is placed in an article written by Arthur
Jarvis and read by his father after his death, the instrument of James Jarvis’
conversion. In this remake we hear little of Arthur’s thoughts, what matters
are two scenes where James encounters black people – first at the boys club
organised by Arthur in a township and later in a personal encounter with
Stephen.
This leads to the final reconciliation, sealed by the plan
to rebuild the rural church and symbolised by the arrival of the rains, for
which the black subsistence farmers have been waiting. As in the earlier
version the story provides space for black township life. At the end a powerful
sequence shows the execution of Absalom intercut with his father’s prayers on a
hill overlooking Ixopo, and the birth of his son, Stephen’s grandson. Against
this must be set the film’s repetition of a range of black characters, from
saintly Stephen to his manipulative, populist brother, with no corresponding
variation in the white characters. James Jarvis is converted from prejudice to
sympathy, with an only faint demur from a family friend. The nearest to a
depiction of the real racist violence is in the prison and court where,
interestingly, the guilty characters all appear to be Afrikaners. The centre of
the film is exemplified by the role of Leleti Khumalo who plays Katie,
Absalom’s common law wife. Her sole function appears to be producing the
grandson of Stephen, a far cry from her powerful presence in the earlier
Sarafina. There is a replication of the discourse of the novel; racism is to be
overcome by black acceptance and white sympathy and good works. A rather feeble
rejoinder to the systematic racism and violence detailed in films like
Sarafina, and rooted in the structures of South African society through
institutions like the black townships.
Mapantsula (1988)
One set of oppositional films (in the 1970s) were cinematic
versions of the dramas associated with Athol Fugard. Other oppositional
filmmakers, connected with movements such as the ANC and PAC also made
independent films. These tended to be documentaries, a mode suitable to films
that were openly propagandistic. They also stem from the penchant for
documentary in the ex-British colonies, as opposed to feature filmmaking in the
ex-French colonies. One of the most famous is Last Grave at Dimbaza (1974), a
powerful indictment of apartheid, ending on a shot of the most recent grave of
a black child in a resettlement camp. But the film suffered from the usual
problems of distribution for independents and from the unthinking racist
censorship of the times. “In the face of the evidence presented in the film,
the BBC’s decision to show a mere twenty seven minutes of it, (originally
running for 54 mins), `balanced’ by a film of the same length compiled from
seven South African propaganda documentaries, bespeaks a discouraging political
naivety…”. (Glaesner 1975)
However, changing political conditions and changes within
the South African film industry in the 1980s created other spaces for black
filmmakers. The exploitation cinema provided one pair of filmmakers with
opportunity. Oliver Schmitz and Thomas Mogotlane’s Mapantsula, released abroad
in 1988, appeared to the censors as an example of the gangster genre. “To meet
the restrictions of the Internal Security Act, the filmmakers simply deleted
every political reference before passing it on for approval”. (Goldman 1989)
Within that the film developed a powerful story of black militancy and
consciousness.
Panic (Mogotlane) is a small-time crook in Soweto. He is
picked up by the police during a funeral procession which becomes a
demonstration. In prison he is clearly demarcated from the black activists also
arrested, who regard him with scorn. During his imprisonment a police
interrogator, Stander (Marcel Van Heerden) attempts to to make Panic
incriminate a black political activist Buma (Peter Sephuma). Whilst the
interrogation proceeds the audience are privy (as Stander is not) to Panic’s
memories of how he became caught up in the funeral. This includes his relations
with his girlfriend Pat (Thembi Mtshali), who works as a maid to a white
family, notable for their petty racism. His relationship with Buma, a black
activist, who tries to help Pat when she is sacked. And with Ma Mobise (Dolly
Rathebe) his next-door neighbour whose son has disappeared in an earlier police
roundup.
These memories unfold in parallel to the interrogation, in a
complex flashback structure, which owes much to the montage theories of
Eisenstein, revealing to the audience
not just parallel events but parallel political ideas. The
ending echoes a scene from Eisenstein’s own film Strike. Here the film cuts
between police video of the funeral and Panic’s own memories; the contrast is
between the white police version, visually accurate but totally
uncomprehending, and Panic’s version, personal but powerfully political. It not
only indicts the apartheid system, but engages with the political consciousness
of black people. There is no running back to the countryside in Mapantsula, it
is a call to resist and struggle.
The finished film recognised as a powerfully political tract
was banned, only available on video and then with an age restriction of 16
years. It apparently was widely viewed on video in the townships in halls,
churches and community clubs.
Conclusion
In the new South Africa the ANC leads a coalition of parties
directly based on the black majority. However, they operate within a negotiated
settlement that retains much of the structure of apartheid South Africa. Some
integration has taken place, but there are new forms of segregation, with
white-only suburbs still surrounding the now open city of Johannesburg. The
economic structure remains capitalistic and dominated by the same companies
that did so profitably out of apartheid. The new series on BBC, Rhodes, details
how this imperialist organised a monopoly of South African diamond mining,
using exploited black labour, an exploitation that led directly to the black
townships. The conditions of that monopoly exist in almost the same form today.
Paton’s foreword actually named Ernest Oppenheimer, mining magnate, as ” one…
able to arrest the deterioration described in this book.” Films like Darren
Roodt’s Cry The Beloved Country reproduce that liberal discourse of fifty years
earlier. The more radical black cinema represented by Mapantsula or the earlier
documentaries have yet to find a space alongside this. The most recent example
dates from 1994; (i.e. under the old system) the C4 co-produced Soweto. This
was a documentary providing a visual history of the townships.
The competing discourses manifested in the different films
are dependent on the economic power that fuels them. The developing situation
in South Africa does not seem to offer much promise for the more radical
discourse. The changes in filmmaking and film-going promise to extend the
dominance of mainstream capitalist cinema, i.e. Hollywood.** Roodt’s most
recent production features Ice Cube as a returning African-American tackling
the drugs problem; a recognisable Hollywood product with a South African
location. It suggests the townships will become (once again) exotic locations
for stories concerned solely with entertainment.
In 1995 South Africa held an International Film and
Television Conference to discuss its future. One proposal was for `Maxi
Movies’, screening facilities in the black townships which, however, would use
video rather than celluloid, to save capital costs (Moving Pictures
International November 1995). The purchasing power of the black majority is
still very small; they can only afford a poor imitation of the western
multiplex. The production features in the report were of upmarket, partly
western funded features, with Hollywood stars, e.g. James Earl Jones and Ice
Cube. It would seem to offer little opportunity for a pure indigenous cinema or
openly political cinema.
In terms of the categories set out by Fernando Solanas and
Octavio Getino Gold is clearly an example of the mainstream, dominant cinema.
Cry Freedom would seem to fall between the mainstream and an auteur cinema. A
film like the second version of Cry the Beloved Country represents a national cinema.
But all remain ‘trapped within the fortress’. We have to look to a film like
Mapantsula for a genuine oppositional film.
The contemporary output of the South African film industry
remains small and only a limited amount can be seen in the UK market. The new
Mandela Long Walk to Freedom follows the conventions of the Hollywood biopic
and is full of the reformism of the earlier ‘liberal films’. There has been one
notable and fairly critical film, Tsotsi (2005), that benefited from winning
the Best Foreign Language Film Award at the 2005 Hollywood Oscars. The film
uses a combination of English and township dialect, hence the subtitles. It is
adapted from a novel by Athol Fugard, which was set at the end of the 1950s.
The film updates the novel to the post-Apartheid South Africa. Crucially it
also changes the ending. The basic plot focuses on the title character, David
(nicknamed Tsotsi), a petty thief. By accident he steals the baby of a black
middle-class couple. Whilst the film ends on a note of ambiguity it does
suggest, through the return of the child to the black couple, a note of class
conciliation. The title translated as ‘thug’ in English recalls Mapantsula. And
the sequences in the township are powerful and revelatory. However, the
resolution lacks the political punch of the earlier film. I certainly felt to me that this weakened the
more radical note of the book.
In fact, in many ways the most radical film to emerge from
post-Apartheid South Africa seems to me to be the science fiction film, District
9 (2009). The film depicts townships filled, not with black people, but
oppressed aliens. It is as if the surrealists had taken the situation and
transformed it into one of their subversive morality tales. Alongside the
macabre violence of the film is a strong strand of desire, both among the
aliens and the key white South African character. And like all good horror
films there is also a potent ‘return of the repressed’. The way that the film
plays with generic conventions, both science fiction and protest melodrama,
makes it a powerful and critical voice.
The effect of Hollywood mores can be seen by comparing the
funeral depicted in Cry Freedom and the news footage of the actual event, shown
in Biko (C4 1989). A similar comparison can be made of the school student
rebellion in Cry Freedom and photographs of the actual event in Soweto (C4
1994). In both cases the commercial film images are smarter and glossier.
The latest report on the South African film and television
industry appeared in Screen
International on October 11 1996 and showed `local’ film
production with 1 % of box-office (as against 92% for Hollywood).
Bibliography
Max Farrar (1988) `Biko on the big screen’ in Where and When, January
14-28 1988
Verina Glaesner (1975) Review of `Last Grave at Dimbaza’ Monthly Film
Bulletin, May 1975.
Steven Goldman (1989) `Panic and Protest’, Guardian January 14 Charles
Van Onselen (1976) Landlords and Rotgut’ in History Workshop, Issue 2
Alan Paton (1948) Cry the Beloved Country London: Jonathan Cape Powell,
Ivor and Fisher, William (1989) `White Mischief’ Independent Magazine 27 May
Keyan Tomaselli (1989) The Cinema of Apartheid, London: Routledge.
This article originally appeared in itp Film Reader I 1996. Reproduced
with kind agreement of the Editor.
Source : filmsite.org
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