Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

However, a cursory reading of literature on South African cinema will show that these selections aren’t a satisfying enough representation of South Africa’s cinematic landscape. Which is not to say that the collection did not make for engaging viewing. On the contrary, each of the films brings some rather noteworthy benefits to the table. “Sarafina!”, for instance, pays vibrant, musical tribute to the role of South African youth in the struggle against apartheid. Adapted from a successful musical of the same name, with Darrell James Roodt at the helm, the film is particularly noteworthy for the refreshing performance of Leleti Khumalo in the title role, which she essays with such refreshing naiveté and energy that it is rather impossible to relate strongly to her struggle with her own role in the fight against apartheid.

“Cry, The Beloved Country”, also directed by Roodt goes back to an earlier time to Alan Paton’s novel written when apartheid was first being set up in South Africa. It examines the reaction of two fathers, a white farmer named James Jarvis (Richard Harris) and Stephen Khumalo (James Earl Jones) a black preacher from the same village, coming to terms with the fates of their sons. Jarvis’s son Ian, a champion of the black South Africans, is murdered by Khumalo’s son Absalom in a robbery gone wrong. In the ensuing interweaving of their lives, Jarvis is confronted with the reality of his own bigotry while Khumalo’s faith and his purpose in the world are tested by the tragedy that befalls his family. It is a particularly compelling internal story, played out excellently by the two restrained leads.

“Red Dust” by Tom Hooper explores one of the many unusual socio-political situations the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was faced with. The film stars Hilary Swank as Sarah Barcant, a human rights lawyer who has suffered at the hands of the apartheid regime, because she made friendships with black teenagers in her youth. Now, she must represent an activist and politician named Alex Mpondo when Mpondo contests the amnesty application of a police officer in the apartheid regime in the hopes of finding out what happened to a friend who was arrested with him and never seen since.

Then there was “Dollars and White Pipes”, a rags-to-riches story that follows Bernie through a journey from drugs and gang wars to emotional and moral independence. Based on a true story, it is a slick but absorbing tale of the underbelly of South African society. Also worth a watch was “Yesterday”, another Roodt film starring Leleti Khumalo: a depiction of the travails faced by a young woman named Yesterday when she discovers that she and her husband are infected with AIDS.

One of the primary problems with the Country Focus was the ambivalence of many of the films to their subject matter. “Sarafina!”, for instance, lacks the courage to either validate or denounce the violence that its young protagonists commit in the course of their struggle against the regime. “Cry, The Beloved Country”, in staying true to the original book, fails to incorporate the learning of the many decades since, and ends up being dated and somewhat irrelevant as far as its politics is concerned. “Red Dust” makes the mistake of focusing too much on Barcant’s emotional struggle as against Mpondo’s, thus transporting the discussion into a safely intellectual space that is far easier to handle than the more immediate issues that the latter character’s journey brings to the fore. And “Yesterday” takes the path of least resistance in this tear-jerker tale of a mother who struggles against AIDS in order to give her daughter a better future.

Moreover, one has to wonder why a larger representation of contemporary black South African directors did not occur. After all, the selection featured three different films by Roodt, as well as a slapstick comedy featuring Leon Schuster that may have made money at the box office but is by no means a film worth showcasing in a forum such as this.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail