Powerful doccies by students
RHODES University (RU) fourth-year television students have created three powerful and thought-provoking short documentaries, which premiered to the public at the glitzy RU Television Documentary Film Fest last week.
Challenged by the theme “Quests and Questions”, six students produced three very different 20-minute offerings; Money from the Sea, The Eden, and Ezakithi namasiko.
In Money from the Sea, Abner Acomm and Daniel Tucker join chokka fishermen from Port Elizabeth, who must earn a living fishing for squid in the cold and often dangerous waters along the Eastern Cape coast.
The documentary sweeps you along from when Abel Goliath and Vakele James Maxwell leave their homes and families to spend three weeks aboard the Jamie Jay as they hunt the increasingly elusive squid off Port Elizabeth, Jeffrey’s Bay and Plettenberg Bay.
The documentary captures the harsh lives of these fishermen, offset by their rough humour, philosophical wisdom, and extreme excitement when they finally track down the squid.
Their palpable relief as they head to shore for a week’s leave is tinged by sadness at the news that another crew whose boat was lost in violent seas did not make it home.
The Eden sees Collette Prince and Tess Miles set out to confront a rightwing Christian Afrikaans group hellbent on creating their own whites-only paradise in Willowmore in the Eastern Cape, and in Ezakithi namasiko – Our value and the things that belong to us – Catharina Anderson and Thingo Mthombeni explore how young South Africans navigate what they term a predominantly Western world that leaves little room for traditional African practices.
Mthombeni, who is from a deeply Christian home where traditional practices are eschewed, feels called to her African spiritual identity. She returns home to explore this, and in some intensely open discussions with her mother and her grandmother, she seeks courage to embrace both her African and Western identity.
The three documentaries are available on YouTube at http\\rutv4.ru.ac.za
They are well worth viewing.