southafrica

The Swenkas

by James McNally on April 30, 2005

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Hot Docs

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)

Tagged as: #hotdocs05, denmark, Documentaries, fathers-and-sons, Hot Docs, southafrica

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Beneath the Stars

by James McNally on April 25, 2005

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Hot Docs

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)

Tagged as: #hotdocs05, Documentaries, Hot Docs, music, southafrica, sweden

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Drum

by James McNally on September 11, 2004

in Film Festivals,TIFF

Drum (South Africa, dir­ector Zola Maseko): Drum is the story of Henry Nxumalo, a journ­alist for South Africa’s pion­eering Drum magazine. Set in the mid-1950s, the film attempts to recreate the ambi­ence of Sophiatown, an area of shops and nightclubs in central Johannesburg that has been com­pared to Harlem during its Renaissance. Henry is at first con­tent to write sports stories for the magazine, until the gradual encroach­ment of apartheid laws threatens his beloved neigh­bour­hood. Henry’s politi­ciz­a­tion leads to con­front­a­tions with the author­ities and to a pre­dict­able end.

Overall, I don’t feel like I have much to com­plain about. It’s just that, well, I think I expected more punch. I’m a vet­eran of many films and plays dealing with South African his­tory, but most of them (Cry Freedom and the under­ap­pre­ci­ated Barbara Hershey vehicle A World Apart, for instance) deal with the polit­ical awakening of white lib­eral South Africans, and have been dir­ected by white, often for­eign, dir­ectors. Even so, I found them powerful and inspiring. Naturally I expected that a film about a genuine black hero dir­ected by a young black South African dir­ector would be even more powerful and affecting. And this one just wasn’t. Clearly, the casting of American Taye Diggs in the role of Henry has a little bit to do with it. His casting tells me that the dir­ector wanted to make a com­mer­cial film, and with that comes some inev­it­able tradeoffs. The film feels too short and hur­ried to make Henry’s trans­form­a­tion con­vin­cing. His rela­tion­ships with his wife, boss, and col­leagues were surely an integral part of the story, and yet they feel super­fi­cial here. At the Q&A after the film, Diggs even admits that he still feels the part should have gone to a South African actor. The dir­ector countered that “women dig Taye Diggs” and that his pres­ence would “put bums in seats.” Enough said about that.

The music, though, stands out and almost suc­ceeds in elev­ating the film. Granted, it is pretty hard to mess up the music in a South African film, and here there is a fine mix of town­ship jazz and mournful hymns that hints at what life in Sophiatown must have been like.

Overall, the film was com­pet­ently written, dir­ected, shot and acted. But it feels a little bit like a missed oppor­tunity. Apart from the two films I men­tioned above, you really should see the one-woman play The Syringa Tree (by Pamela Gien) if you ever get the chance. That play, per­formed by one woman on a nearly bare stage, has left indelible images in my mind that no film can ever match.

Related Web Site: Drum Photographer Jürgen Schadeberg — check out the film on this page entitled “Have You Seen DRUM Lately?” which sounds like a nice com­panion piece to this film.

7/10(7/10)

Tagged as: apartheid, southafrica

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Hot Docs Tuesday

by James McNally on April 28, 2004

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Hot Docs

Story of a Beautiful Country (South Africa/Canada, Director: Khalo Matabane) — This was a dis­ap­point­ment. Billed as a road movie through the new South Africa (and today marks ten years since the first demo­cratic mul­tiracial elec­tions in the country), it ended up stranding us inside a taxi watching the dir­ector con­verse with people either a little crazy (like the unre­formed mil­itant Afrikaner with his M-16) or a little drunk (like the end­less inter­view with an inter­ra­cial couple it looked like the dir­ector met at a nightclub). There was some real insight from a few, and a lot of point­less jabber from most. The truth is that South Africa is a beau­tiful country, and so a lot of striking images were cap­tured, even through the wind­screen, but as a doc­u­mentary, this failed to live up to my expect­a­tions. (6/10)

Army of One (Canada, Director: Sarah Goodman) — Canadian Sarah Goodman was living in New York around the time of 9/11, and noticed the long lineups at army recruiting centres after the tragedy. In this too-short film, she fol­lows three volun­teers for more than two years, through basic training and beyond. Of the three, only one is still in the army (and the dir­ector informed us at the screening that now-Sergeant Miller has returned home safely from Iraq). We follow the three as they try to find a pur­pose in their lives, one that the army prom­ises but fails to deliver. The film ends a bit abruptly. I would have loved to see even more. It brought back my own brief exper­i­ences in the Canadian mil­itary, and sharpened the deep ambi­val­ence I have about the way the army molds people to do a job nobody wants to talk about. There are a lot of good people in the mil­itary, and a lot of good things. But there are also many things that aren’t talked about in the recruiting centres, and this film uncovers and lays them bare. (9/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs04, iraq, southafrica

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Stander

by James McNally on September 8, 2003

in Film Festivals,TIFF

Stander (Canada/UK/South Africa, dir­ector Bronwen Hughes): Andre Stander was a police cap­tain in South Africa. In 1976, during riot duty, he shoots and kills a young black man. Deeply dis­turbed by his place in the apartheid society, he begins rob­bing banks, while still working as a police officer. After more than two dozen rob­beries, he is appre­hended and sen­tenced to 32 years in prison. After two years, he breaks out of prison along with two accom­plices and soon the “Stander Gang” are at it again, rob­bing dozens more banks (as many as five in one day). This unbe­liev­able and yet true story is told with gusto by dir­ector Bronwen Hughes. One of my friends was vaguely sur­prised that a female dir­ector could be so true to the way male friend­ships and camaraderie operate, but Hughes does a great job. Because the story takes place in the ’70s and ’80s, the art dir­ec­tion was cru­cial, too, and it’s pulled off mag­ni­fi­cently, aided by a jazzy and slightly campy soundtrack. The film seemed like a joyous remix of Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Catch Me If You Can, and even Starsky and Hutch.

In my opinion, the only thing that would have made it better would have been a little more insight into what Stander really thought of the white society in South Africa, and what his real motives were, if any. Was anarchy all he believed in?

(8/10)

Tagged as: apartheid, southafrica

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