Man bites dogma
Filmmaker Khalo Matabane spoke to Sue de Groot about icons, complexity and his new film ‘Nelson Mandela: the Myth and Me’
THE inside of Khalo Matabane’s mind must, I imagine, look a bit like the Gilooly’s interchange, with twisting lanes of thought that cross and curve and swoop and fly off in unexpected directions. He speaks in fast, lucid staccato. So much to say, so many people to say it to.
In a short gap before he addresses an international audience via video feed at the Goethe Institute in Johannesburg, Matabane reels off the reasons he made his latest documentary, Nelson Mandela: The Myth and Me .
“I never thought that I would do any form of documentary related to Madiba,” he says. “As a child [he grew up in the Limpopo village of Ga Mphahlele], we did not have pictures of Madiba. He was this mythical figure that in my head I saw as some kind of giant. We did not have picture books. My imagination was fired by traditional tales.”
Like the rest of the world, Matabane was in awe of the generosity of spirit shown by Mandela after his release from prison, but at the same time he became increasingly disillusioned by the reality of a South Africa where many are “living in the most degrading and appalling conditions, believing that they are free”.
So he made this film, originally called A Letter to Nelson Mandela, which won the Special Jury Award at Amsterdam’s International Documentary Film Festival last year. In a review from the IDFA published on December 5 2013, the Hollywood Reporter called it an “intriguingly ambivalent assessment of a great man’s legacy with a prematurely obituary air”. Mandela died that day.
This timing may have created the impression that Matabane’s was yet another tribute film. It is not. It is an interrogation by thinkers, artists, activists and world leaders of the dogma of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Matabane took two years to make the film, during which he travelled the world to track down and interview his 12 subjects, among them Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger, Ariel Dorfman and the Dalai Lama. The film, he says, is as much about his own perceptions as it is about the opinions of those he interviews.
“It is less about Madiba and more about my memories and my thoughts on what the country has become.”
Produced by SA’s Born Free Productions, of which Matabane is a shareholder, in association with Germany’s Gebreuder Beetz
‘The myth of Sisyphus is a good metaphor for filmmaking’
and with funding from several local and international bodies, the film has so far been shown in the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark and in the UK on BBC4. It will screen at the London Human Rights Festival this month, in Canada, France and Germany in April, in New Zealand in May and in Australia in July. Born Free is still in discussion with SA broadcasters to bring the film to a local audience later this year.
“It is harder to get money in South Africa than it is overseas,” says Matabane. “It’s a tough business, getting people to watch your work. The myth of Sisyphus — eternally trying to roll a rock up a hill and having it roll back over you — that’s a good metaphor for filmmaking. South Africans are so enthusiastic about sport, there’s a sense of nationalism and patriotism, but that’s not there when it comes to film. If I look at my generation of filmmakers, 10 years ago there were a lot of us, all enthusiastic about making films. So few are still around today.”
Ten years ago Matabane, now 39, was writing, directing and producing the acclaimed Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon, a low-budget experimental film about displaced people that won a shed-load of local and international awards. His first feature film, State of Violence, was lauded at the Toronto and Berlin film festivals in 2010. Since then and in between, he has worked on a spaghetti junction of projects and is currently making a film based on Jonny Steinberg’s book The Number.
What he’d really like to do, however, is make a film about Winnie Mandela.
“The ultimate fictional documentary I have always wanted to make is about Winnie Mandela. That’s the only biopic I’d like to make in the world. I feel like there’s a difference between a human being with great qualities and someone that would make a great film. The two don’t really go together.
“I think when you’re a filmmaker you are looking for a story that is layered, that reflects on something complex about a human being, that says something complex about us as people and as a society. For me, Winnie Mandela has that complexity that interests me.”
If the signs on the road point him in the right direction, this too may be a film worth watching out for.