Esolved pain – and its wrath– laid bare
French company JBA Productions, which brought together six filmmakers of the “born-free” generation to workshop a film that explores life two decades into democracy.
The film is by Siphamandla Bongwane, Jerry Obakeng Gaegane, Stanford Gibson, Asanda Kupa, Gontse More and Nduduzo Shandu, and mentorship was provided by director JeanLoïc Portron. The result is a film that is
only urgent and relevant, but also flecked with traces of poignant autoethnography that will feel familiar to many South Africans.
Endearing archival footage of a young boy’s precocious oratory on the promises of new democracy melts into
harsh reality of the present day: a Kliptown shackdwellers’ movement battles to make its demands for housing heard by politicians; a community tries to take control of a severe drug epidemic; a group of illegal miners
Encounters Film Festival runs from June 2 to 12 at The Labia and Cinema Nouvou (V&A Waterfront) in Cape Town, and at The Bioscope and Cinema Nouvou (Rosebank) in Johannesburg. encounters.co.za
The 37th Durban International Film Festival runs from June 16 -to 26 at multiple venues in Durban. durbanfilmfest.co.za choose to hold their ground against the threat of police rubber bullets.
A taut line is strung between where South Africa was in 1994 and where we ought to have been by now, and it bears the ever-increasing tension of a nation’s frustrated coming-of-age.
This is a difficult landscape in which to come of age, its epidermis pockmarked and scarified by the heavy machinery of history. When a group of boys is rescued from an illegal initiation school among the mine dumps, we encounter a people suspended in precariousness, searching for new rites of passage to chart a way through the liminal space of disillusionment.
Kliptown is the home of the Freedom Charter, but its inhabitants remain deprived of the most basic services, living in shacks that are flooded with mud every time it rains.
The film captures people at the threshold of wrath, refusing to be treated no better than the mine tailings that surround them. The futility of anger is thrown into relief by the absurdest disconnect between the nonchalant rhetoric of politicians and the citizens to whom they occasionally avail themselves.
Their coolness in the face of rage only adds fuel to their fire.
When one official expresses expedient sadness at the sight of old women at protests, the irony is clear. The camera’s vantage point takes the position of an insider, showing that the move- ment for change is being led by strong women — mothers, particularly — who are motivated not by hot-headed idealism, but by the pragmatism of caring for their families.
Last month, two KwaZulu-Natal ANC councillors were jailed for the murder of Abahlali baseMjondolo activist Thuli Ndlovu. Last week, the SABC announced that it will no longer allow images of violent protest to air, out of fear that it may encourage others to follow suit. The officials’ nonchalance masks a dangerous hostility towards protest.
Soweto, Time of Wrath is one of a steady stream of films that documents resistance in post-apartheid South Africa, including Dear Mandela in 2012 and Miners Shot Down in 2014 (both of which can be found on YouTube), as well as The Shore Break from last year. These films don’t only bear witness to protest; their grounded, observational style is in itself part of the resistance to dominant narratives. The gritty 60 minutes of Soweto, Time of Wrath give voice to people whose subjective truth is being actively kept in the shadow of the gleam of polished grand narratives.
As a collaborative film made by young filmmakers, its rawness resists the opiate of the myth presented by glossy Mandela biopics, and instead seeks a deeper authenticity.
This searing truth of ordinariness is found in a quiet moment in Eldorado Park. From outside a window, we hear a group of people praying together, and their unassuming plea for salvation echoes far beyond the walls of their modest community hall: “Lord, grant us the patience to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.”