South Africa

Shirley Adams

annette — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Interlacing themes of poverty and perseverance in the Cape Flats area of post-Apartheid South Africa, Oliver Hermanus explores the relationship between a mother, Shirley, and her quadriplegic son, Donovan, as he slips into depression after having been shot in his neighbourhood.

Having given up her job to care for her son, and having been abandoned by her husband, Shirley struggles to support Donovan’s mental and physical well-being and at the same time take care of herself. Due to high medical bills, she is forced to rely on the help of her neighbours and the meagre money her errant husband leaves her sporadically in the mailbox. Caught between coping after being abandoned by her husband, dealing with the police who are trying to capture the person responsible for the shooting, and consoling Donovan as he struggles to come to terms with his permanent disability, Shirley’s life is both overwhelming and erratic.

Shirley, played by well-known South African actress, Denise Newman, is strong and resilient in her efforts to support Donovan, going so far as to steal, doing whatever she believes necessary to protect her son. She is also a very proud woman, and is reluctant to accept any help, including shunning the help of a white personal support worker named Tamsin (Emily Child), interpreting her service as charity. She does, however, swallow her pride and later accepts Tamsin’s help.

Donovan (Keenan Arrison) is for the most part quiet throughout the film, though not without effect, seeming to live almost entirely in his head. Keenan does a fantastic job of portraying the deep anguish a young person feels when their life is irrevocably changed by an incident out of their control. The relationship between himself and his mother is both touching and stifling. Few words are exchanged between them but the tension in their relationship is very palpable when they’re in the same room. Anguish and pain, fear and desperation are etched in their movements, making this a very absorbing film.

Hermanus’ use of close-up camera shots, particularly on Shirley, gives this film the stifling, erratic and intimate feeling, making the audience feel what the character feels. This, I felt, was the most important element of Shirley Adams. Furthermore, the lighting chosen by Hermanus, particularly in the scenes shared by Shirley and Donovan, is sombre and dark, well chosen to contribute to the overall effect of the film. The themes of poverty, struggle and perseverance were effectively communicated throughout. Shirley and Donovan live in a poor neighbourhood in Cape Town, an area designated by the Apartheid government as being for “Coloured” people only. The conditions for the people living in the Cape Flats have not changed much since the official end of Apartheid and the daily lives of “Coloured” people in this area continue to be a struggle. Hermanus’ film is raw and socially relevant because it depicts the circumstances of the reality that many face.

Hermanus does a wonderful job highlighting the sacrifices one makes in the role of a mother, especially a single mother. Although Shirley’s life is changed completely, her sacrifice for her son and the strength she shows despite insurmountable challenges is something worth taking away from this film.

Written by: Toni Francis, October 3rd 2010

District 9

admin — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 17:01:00 +0000

By Neill Blomkamp

WingNut Films

In 1982 an alien spacecraft descends into the Earth’s stratosphere and hovers for months over Johannesburg, South Africa. Humans, alternately fearing that the aliens are hostile and hoping that they are harbingers of technological advances, board the ship. They are disappointed to discover that the aliens are neither, being nothing more than incredibly ill and malnourished refugees from a distant planet. Human governments around the world provide aid for the aliens while they bicker over what to do with them. Eventually tensions between humans and the aliens (derisively known as “prawns”) spill over and the aliens are herded into District 9, a trash strewn shanty town. The aliens are then restricted from entering certain parts of South Africa.

After nearly thirty years, the world’s governments turn over control to Multi-National United (MNU), a private contractor much more interested in the advanced weaponry of the aliens than their well-being. A bumbling field agent for MNU, Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is put in charge of relocating more than a million aliens further away from Johannesburg in a new camp. After being sprayed by an unknown substance during a raid, Wikus begins a frightening metamorphosis into an alien. Realizing that Wikus can operate the weaponry due to the fact that his DNA has begun to change (the aliens’ guns cannot operate without alien DNA), MNU plans to experiment on Wikus. Wikus, rightfully fearing for his life, escapes from custody and hides out in District 9 where he seeks help from an alien known as Christopher Johnson. Christopher, who is earlier seen disputing the legality of an eviction notice, has plans of his own.

Inspired by the forced removal of sixty-thousand residents from District 6 in Cape Town, District 9 functions as a metaphor for apartheid-era racial policies. The “prawns” are definitely meant to symbolize members of racial minority groups as they are bipedal, employ verbal communication that is easily understood by humans, and even engage in inter-species sexual relations. The (mostly white) humans put in charge of policing them unthinkingly utilize colonialist arguments to justify their oppressive tactics; “prawns” are stereotyped as uncivilized, aggressive, lacking in initiative, none too bright, and lacking the same concept of land ownership that humans have. And Wikus’ transformation from human to alien mirrors the fates of scores of South African whites who lost their legal standing as whites once the government discovered their “non-white” ancestry.

Despite its interesting premise and inventive storytelling, this movie is eventually undone by its flaws. First, there are a lot of plot holes. For instance, MNU’s decision to kill Wikus and harvest his organs doesn’t make much sense. Isn’t he much more useful to them alive than dead?

Second, racial stereotypes of Africans abound. While always unacceptable, racial stereotypes definitely don’t belong in a movie with an anti-xenophobia message. However, that did not deter the filmmakers from presenting extremely negative images of sub-Saharan Africans. Every black person in District 9 was either: 1) an unthinking toady of white authority figures (Mandla Gaduka), 2) a violent criminal, 3) a believer in witchcraft and superstition, or 4) some combination of 1-3.

I found it very telling that the Nigerian warlords don’t live much better than the “prawns” they regularly exploit. (Even though quite a few Nigerians do live in South Africa, the filmmakers should not have assumed that an international audience would know that, which is yet another flaw in this movie.) I also thought it was odd that none of the South African blacks featured in the film seemed to see any parallels between the aliens’ predicament and their own recent history.

Finally, the third act quickly disintegrates into a standard Hollywood shoot-em-up, and District 9 relies too heavily on gore. Once the audience became aware that the aliens’ military hardware can literally blow its targets to bits, the filmmakers should have kept much of the violence off-screen. I covered my eyes numerous times, and I am not exactly squeamish.

Despite its imperfections, the mockumentary District 9 does make you think while managing to be entertaining, a feat few of the movies released this year have managed to pull off. In fact, District 9 is likely to find a wide audience and make more than a few “Best of 2009” lists.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, August 15th 2009

Tapologo

admin — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:34:00 +0000

Directed by Gabriella Gutierrez Dewar, Sally Gutierrez Dewar

Tapologo is a full-length documentary shot in Northwest Province, South Africa. Directors Gabriella and Sally Gutierrez Dewar chronicle a handful of the 20,000 displaced African refugees in a squatter camp called Freedom Park. Here we are exposed to life and death in a place where fifty percent of the women are infected with HIV.

The film is divided into two parts. Part one opens inside the shack of an emaciated woman receiving care from two local nurses. The woman is dying from Tuberculosis, and for a moment she glances directly into the camera lens with brown eyes that appear to have lost all innocence and hope. As we get to know other patients and nurses who inhabit the park, we see that most of the women have slept with men for money, many have contracted HIV, yet only some are receiving anti-retroviral treatment. All of them are either dying or fighting to survive. Personal accounts from the women are interlaced with stunning visual images that are both emotional and relevant, and the intensity never lets up.

The second part begins with desolate music by Joel Assaizky and shots of people walking across train tracks, sitting on sides of roads, just standing around watching each other. This time is spent contextualizing the squalor of Freedom Park in the apartheid aftermath. In a place where the alternative to starvation is sexual exploitation, it’s impossible to ignore the political history.

Then we learn about Tapologo, a collective of female caregivers who self-organize and treat the hopelessness of their immediate surroundings. Before this network existed, individuals were left alone with their chronic diseases as poverty and pain devoured them. Now these strong women, many of them diagnosed with HIV themselves, have begun to administer anti-retroviral treatment and provide bedside and hospice care. As a result, a community has begun to form, and with the help of Brother Joe, Sister Georgina, and bishop Kevin Dowling (Catholic community leaders and activists who share relatively progressive ideology), Tapologo has begun to break Freedom Park's cycle of poverty, patriarchy and an overall loss of dignity.

One scene in particular illustrates the spirit of this film. A nurse named Thimbi (a former sex-worker and HIV victim) pays a visit to the shack of a helpless woman and her infant. She says confidently, "Filth can make the illness worse," and begins to wash dishes and floors on her hands and knees. For Thimbi and others, volunteering with Tapologo gave them a chance to believe in themselves, to find beauty within, and to be proud of life's small victories. This moment, and this film, is a great reminder to step out of our daily comforts and confront real issues facing real women.

Written by: Katy Pine, June 25th 2009

Art + Revolution: The Life and Death of Thami Mnyele, South African Artist

admin — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:00:00 +0000

By Diana Wylie

University of Virginia Press

It should be of no surprise that some of the most peaceful and timid visionaries have met violent deaths. It seems that the power with which they create, forge, or even love is equal to that which opposes their very existence. Diana Wylie captures one such figure with Art + Revolution.

With the many changes that have taken place in the United States in the past few years, it would be easy and even relieving for some to forget the far-reaching struggles that helped to bring those changes about. Wylie's self-acknowledged humility realized through the stark differences between her and Mnyele's plight gives the reader a chance to put an artistic and sensitive face to the struggle against South African apartheid.

Perhaps Thami Mnyele’s birthplace of Alexandra Township in Johannesburg, and its ruthless violence, was enough for the universe to bring about such an overwhelmingly sensitive man. Despite whatever created this sensitivity, it was Thami’s lens with which to create art that reflected not only the macrocosmic monstrosity that racism produced, but also the microcosmic manifestations of South Africa's participation. Microcosm is a misnomer considering the impact apartheid had on Mnyele and how it limited his ability to move within his own country. These limitations would find Mnyele and his comrades finding both solace and artistic inspiration in the workings of jazz musicians like John Coltrane and Charlie Parker and writers like Wole Soyinka and Frantz Fanon—people who shared similar struggles thousands of miles away.

It wasn't just a kinship with people of similar skin tones or even plights, but also with artists, such as Van Gogh, Michelangelo, and even Vietnamese poets that inspired Mnyele to dig deep within the confines of his sensitivity to reveal the reality he wanted his art to convey. Even still, it was the death of friend and countryman Steve Biko that served as a political turning point for Mnyele and his artistic purpose. Mnyele's art seems to leave enough openness to interpretation while using that same openness to convey a sense of the freedom he fought so unassumingly for.

Despite Wylie's "fragmented" account of Mnyele's life story she still leaves us with enough insight into the life of a man whose artwork details through each piece, his struggle to and for an understanding of a psyche confined by the limits of hatred and its imposition on a people. It is so difficult to sum up the impact of someone’s life in a book, but Wylie beautifully opens us to the continual artistic profundity each time we Thami Mnyele's name.

Written by: Olupero R. Aiyenimelo, February 27th 2009

When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided By Race

admin — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:27:00 +0000

By Judith Stone

Hyperion

It would be hard to find a story more inherently dramatic than that of Sandra Laing, one that can show in a more complete and complex manner the ramifications of South Africa’s apartheid regime. With coloring distinctly different from that of her white family, Sandra Laing was expelled from her white school in 1965 and reclassified as “coloured” (of mixed-race descent), then, after her family engaged in legal battle, was made ‘white” once again; in the throes of this conflict, at the age of fifteen, Laing fell in love and ran away with a black man, with whom she had several children. Finding herself more comfortable with her lover’s family, she applied, once more, for racial reclassification. In the meantime, she lived with the inevitable hardships that came with being classified as “black” in South Africa while remaining the object of international journalism, gained and lost contact with members of her white family, and tried, as best she could, to ignore larger political structures and the pain they had caused her.

In the delicately titled When She Was White, Judith Stone skillfully limns the high drama of Sandra Laing’s story. Stone spent several years working in South Africa, interviewing Laing and many other individuals connected to the story, as well as researching the alarming intricacies of the apartheid government. The result is a thoughtful, moving book. Although Stone occasionally veers into the sanctimonious when describing the plight of black people under apartheid, she portrays the character of Sandra Laing, and the drastic psychological ramifications of her early life, with a delicate, skillful eye. As is often the case in a far-reaching biography, the events of Laing’s later life cannot quite match the drama of her childhood and adolescence, but by including occasional interludes into her own analysis of Laing’s current character Stone successfully keeps the book compelling.

Particularly for readers not well-versed in modern South African history, Judith Stone’s thoughtful biography is valuable. It tells an intense story without overwhelming readers with intensity, delves into interesting aspects of both South African apartheid and racism itself, explores the complex nature of memory, and introduces its audience to a woman, a character, more complex than the news bite drama of her tale appears.

Written by: Gemma Cooper-Novack, June 10th 2008