'Weblog by Don Mattera
The unanimous and resounding international show of hands for the multi-award winning Skin bears testimony to the fact that South Africa is teeming with innumerable fascinating stories of the country's sordid past of human degradation, and of the sustaining ethics of forgiveness and reconciliation - which need to be shared with audiences throughout the world. This is a heart-rending (part fact-part mythic fiction) tale of Sandra Laing, a dark-skinned child born to a rural, storekeeping, Afrikaner couple whose customers were black and oppressed.
In 2007, the NFVF sent out a call to up and coming young filmmakers to submit short film scripts in any genre but with two stipulations- the films had either to be in an indigenous language and or be written and directed by women.
Since the advent of political, and therefore, artistic and cultural liberation coupled with an ensuing snail's-pace, but still welcome transformation in the film production industry in South Africa, local film-goers have long been starved of experiencing superlative dramatizations by child actors - such as evidenced in the acting of the young cast of
Izulu Lami (My Secret Sky), which premiered at the Durban International Film Festival in August.
Review by Don Mattera
When I informed a close friend that I had recently attended the screening of a movie called "Triomf," he smirked, cleared his throat, and spat – what sounded to be his disgust - into a Newclare township bin filled with trash.
Before I put my signature to the list of well-wishing producers, financiers, actors, film critics and the panel asked by the National Film and Video Foundation to consider Jerusalema for Oscar nomination for yet another inexplicably violent depiction of Africa and Africans, I want to say, that I am aware that it all comes with the territory.
I have always been profoundly captivated by the Third World notion – especially in Africa and its Diaspora, and including in the study of Egyptology - of the existence of a feminine or matriarchal persona within the Supreme Spirit or in what European Christendom identifies as being the 'God-head.' During an extensive 1992 research sojourn in the North-west Cape areas of the Richtersveld, Bushmansland, Namaqualand and in the Northern and Eastern Cape provinces as well as the Namib Desert and various rural and urban regions of Namibia (accompanied by Capetonian filmmaker, Stefano Steve Moni), I raised the topic with several influential Khoikhoi and San elders during our discourse into the evolution and perpetuation of the Oral Tradition.
The diverse and critical responses – both cellular and personal, which I have encountered and continue to experience, following my critique of Entabeni (Macbeth) in this space a few weeks ago, have convinced me - contrary to my earlier reservations, that the SABC TV adaptations of William Shakespeare’s powerful classics (with the professional and formidable support and collaboration of the NFVF) – appear to have struck a deep nerve in the consciences and awareness of its audiences, particularly among the high school learners that I have addressed on the relevance of his work in our lives today.
On a humorous note, I don’t expect Shakespeare to turn in his archaic resting place as his enduring and enchanting play, Macbeth, undergoes yet another artistic, cultural and linguistic make-over to comment on South Africa’s present corporate psychoses and almost tyrannical pre-occupation with the unchecked accumulation of wealth and power. In fact, methinks that the Bard’s bones may even have bounced with smug glee at the modern African immortalization of his bloody classic.
