Tag Archive for 'southafrica'

We Are Together (Thina Simunye)

Published
by
James McNally
on April 27, 2007
in Documentaries, Film Festivals and Hot Docs
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We Are Together (Thina Simunye)

We Are Together (Thina Simunye) (Director: Paul Taylor, UK, 2006): It would be pretty hard to make a bad film from such promising material, and I’m glad to say that director Paul Taylor has not made a bad film, though he takes us through some pretty grim territory.

12-year-old Slindile Moya lives with several of her siblings at the Agape orphanage in South Africa. Both of her parents have died from AIDS, and her older siblings can’t afford to care for the younger ones at home anymore. What holds this incredibly close-knit family together is music. The younger ones sing in a choir at the orphanage, and when the whole family is together, they are always singing.

When a chance comes for the choir to record a CD and go on a fund-raising tour for the orphanage, the children are incredibly excited, but when the trip falls through and Slindile’s older brother succumbs to AIDS, our hearts break with her. But as usual, the music pulls everyone through, and they finish the CD anyway, hoping for other opportunities. There are a few more twists and turns in the story that I won’t share, but through it all, Slindile keeps singing and smiling.

It might appear that it was easy to make this film. These are incredibly beautiful children making astonishing music, and if you just left a camera rolling, you’d get a good film. But director Taylor takes us into some incredibly intimate places and lingers there, letting the full emotional impact of these children’s lives take hold of the audience.

As with Born Into Brothels, the film has led the filmmakers to become involved in a charitable project, and I recommend that you buy a CD of the gorgeous music of the Children of Agape, which will go to support the children’s education costs.

Unfortunately for us, the film premiered last night at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, and so the director was there with 14 of the children. Here in Toronto, we had one of the producers, Pauline Von Moltke, who was gracious enough to conduct a Q&A. Unfortunately, my recording wasn’t very good, so I’m not going to post it.

Official site for the film

9/10(9/10)

The Big Sellout (Der Grosse Ausverkauf)

Published
by
James McNally
on April 27, 2007
in Documentaries, Film Festivals and Hot Docs
. 2 Comments

The Big Sellout (Der Grosse Ausverkauf)

The Big Sellout (Der Grosse Ausverkauf) (Director: Florian Opitz, Germany, 2006): Beautifully shot on film, The Big Sellout is yet another strong political documentary, this one on the theme of privatization. Since privatization is a keystone of neoliberal economic policy all over the world, the film takes us to several different locales to see its effects on real people. What we discover is that the effort by multinational corporations to turn the necessities of life (healthcare, electricity, even water) into commodities is having a devastating effect on the people of the developing world.

In the Philippines, Minda spends all of her time trying to scrape money together for dialysis treatments for her teenaged son. In South Africa, Bongani is part of a group of skilled activists who restore electrical service to those whose power has been cut off for non-payment. In Bolivia, Rosa is a grandmother who stood up to the faceless corporation that was attempting to privatize her city’s water supply. And in England, Simon the train driver details the breakup of British Rail and the decline of rail service in that country.

In every case, privatization was the culprit, but to be fair, Opitz attempts to engage with the economists at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund who often impose privatization as a precondition for lending to developing nations. Surprisingly for the director, he gets very little cooperation from these shadowy bodies, who are ostensibly required to be transparent and accountable to their member nations. The one economist he does interview is Joseph Stiglitz, former Chief Economist of the World Bank who now disagrees with the rush to privatize everything, and who has become an opponent of most of the economic policies of globalization.

I was reminded when watching this film of several other strong anti-globalization documentaries of recent years, including The Take, The Corporation, and even The Yes Men. The Big Sellout adds some heartrending personal stories from several corners of the world, and it’s clear that privatization is really only helping those with too much money make even more of it. Without having to pay lip service to the democratic ideals of national governments, corporations are concerned with just one thing: the pursuit of profits. The profits may come, but the human costs should be tallied against them.

The only weakness in the film may be that I was left wondering what I could possibly do, in my comfortable First World life, to combat this creeping sickness. The film’s German web site has some educational materials, so I hope these get translated for the English site soon.

Here is the Q&A with producer Florian Opitz from after the screening:


Duration: 12:37

Official site for the film

9/10(9/10)

His Big White Self

Published
by
James McNally
on May 2, 2006
in Documentaries, Film Festivals and Hot Docs
. Closed
His Big White Self

HIs Big White Self (UK, 2006, Director: Nick Broomfield, 94 minutes): I’m a bit sheepish to admit that this is the first Nick Broomfield documentary that I’ve seen. From what I’ve heard, Broomfield was one of the first documentary filmmakers to insert himself into the narrative, and like Michael Moore, he can sometimes be more of a distraction than necessary.

This film is a companion piece to his 1991 film The Leader, His Driver, and the Driver’s Wife, which was a portrait of South African white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche. It would be a good idea to see that film first, I think, since this film refers to many events from the earlier film. In the 1990s, after the collapse of apartheid, Terreblanche’s group, the Afrikaner Resistance Movement (the Afrikaans acronym is AWB), was responsible for a rash of bombings that killed several people. His followers also violently disrupted gatherings of the ANC and other political opponents, and eventually, Terreblanche faced prison time for some of these crimes (as well as for some more personal misdeeds, like assault and attempted murder). Ridiculously, he serves only three years in prison, and Broomfield returns in 2004 just as he is being released, hoping to interview him again.

As a side note, in the first film, he never sits for a formal interview and Broomfield is reduced to chasing him around trying to provoke confrontations. In the same vein, this time Terreblanche refuses to meet the film crew for an interview (and in fact is prohibited from conducting political interviews as part of his parole), so Broomfield ends up disguising himself and pretending to be seeking an interview regarding a book of poetry Terreblanche has coming out. While these scenes are both funny and tense, it means the “interview” itself is pretty devoid of meaningful statements from The Leader.

Most of the interesting interviews are with the Driver of the first film, J.P. Meyer. An affable man now into his sixties, J.P. seems to really like Broomfield. But just when the audience is warming to him, he spouts some racist nonsense. Men like Meyer are pitiable even in their hatred. Desperate to hold onto their white privilege, and cloaking it in religious language, they’re now growing old as bitter men.

His Big White Self

Terreblanche is a fascinating character. A fiery orator who has based much of his movement and mannerisms on the German National Socialist (Nazi) Party, he constantly paints himself as a victim, and even though mellower now, is still convinced that his cause is right.

The film was hugely enjoyable but slighly flawed for two reasons. First, it really can’t be judged apart from the first film, which I haven’t seen (and which doesn’t appear to be widely available; it’s not even on DVD here in North America). Secondly, Broomfield’s discomfort is played mostly for laughs. The AWB at the zenith of its power had half a million members out of a white population of four million. Even with some of their cartoonish fascist posturing, they were a dangerous and violent group. Even though Broomfield speaks of receiving death threats after the first film, you don’t get the sense of danger in this one. Perhaps the AWB’s power really has disappeared. But when you see how little has changed in some parts of the countryside, you’re left feeling not so sure.

Visit the director’s web site

More on the film from England’s Channel 4

Transcript of a webchat conducted after the film aired on England’s Channel 4

8/10(8/10)

The Swenkas

Published
by
James McNally
on April 30, 2005
in Documentaries, Film Festivals and Hot Docs
. Closed

The Swenkas

The Swenkas (Denmark, 2004, Director: Jeppe Rønde, 72 minutes): This film was really unlike any other documentary I’ve ever seen. The Swenkas are a group of about 20 Zulu men who gather each weekend to “swank”: they dress up in fancy suits and jewellery and compete before a judge to see who is the most stylish. Sort of a “Lord of the Bling” (ooh, couldn’t resist!). But it’s more than just fun for them. Swanking represents self-respect, and these men emphasize certain values such as cleanliness and sobriety. It’s as if the old adage “Clothes make the man” has come to life. Even though some may think these men are spending far too much money on their clothes, it seems to have given them the pride they need to be successful in life. Certainly no one in their families complains. Besides, sometimes they compete for large sums of money (or even, now and then, a cow.)

The reason the film stands out is the way it has been crafted. Director Rønde uses the framing device of a fictional narrator, an old Zulu vagabond who tells us a bit about the group, but also sets up the dramatic arc of the story: the leader of the Swenkas has just died, and his son is grieving and thinking about abandoning the group. This storyline gives the film the feeling of a fictional film, and at times it’s hard to believe that the whole thing isn’t carefully scripted.

The director explained afterwards that he never told the participants what to say, but that since Zulu culture is built around storytelling and the Swenkas were all used to performing, each participant had no trouble “performing” in the film. But they really were working through a difficult time in the life of their group.

The result is a beautifully shot, and even more beautifully edited film that feels more like a fable. The recurring themes are hope and the relationship between fathers and sons. The director actually told us that this film is the second in a trilogy about faith, hope and love, and I found myself really eager to see the other films. A standard documentary approach, with interviews and such, would have made an interesting film. Jeppe Rønde’s unorthodox approach has given us a transcendent one.

More information on the film here.

10/10(10/10)

Beneath the Stars

Published
by
James McNally
on April 25, 2005
in Documentaries, Film Festivals and Hot Docs
. Closed

Beneath the Stars

Beneath the Stars (Sweden/South Africa, 2004, Directors: Titti Johnson and Helgi Felixson, 105 minutes): The film follows Frieda Darvel, one of Cape Town’s many street kids, as she pursues her dream of leaving the streets for a singing career. At the beginning, things look bright. Frieda has been selected for South Africa’s “Popstars” TV show, and makes quite an impression on the nation. But all the offers of help (apartment, voice lessons, recording contracts) come to nothing and pretty soon, Frieda is back on the street, sniffing glue with her boyfriend. Though there is a sort of family for Frieda here, there is no future. Many people try to help her, but we’re left feeling uneasy when one of her early backers secures funding for a “reality show” on homeless teens, and when it falls through, simply disappears. In fact, I felt uneasy a lot of the time watching the film, because if people recognize Frieda at all, they immediately demand that she sing for them. Although she clearly loves to sing, it becomes obvious that for many she is just a performing animal and they have no real interest in her as a person. The line between helping her and using her was even a bit fuzzy when I began to think about the filmmakers. That is, until the story took a bit of a twist.

After being invisible for the first two thirds of the film, suddenly directors Johnson and Felixson quite literally enter the frame and invite Frieda to come back with them to Sweden for three months. A reluctant Frieda finally agrees and it is in Sweden where she is finally able to kick drugs and make a real commitment to staying off the street.

She returns to South Africa with some trepidation, but at the film’s end, she is living in Cape Town and beginning to create an independent life for herself.

The film is generally quite effective with the exception of a couple of things. I thought the middle dragged a lot, with far too much footage of sleeping street kids. The misery of their lives was well apparent by this point in the film and it slowed the pace down unnecessarily. Secondly, due to the episodic structure, the film felt a bit disjointed in a few places. We see Frieda with different hairstyles in successive scenes and it makes it unclear how much time has passed. All in all, a powerful film and one that shows that that the personal involvement of the filmmakers is not always a bad thing. The film reminded me a little of Born Into Brothels in that respect.

8/10(8/10)