More than 120 years ago Johanna Spyri wrote her sentimental, moralistic tale about a little girl called Heidi who lived with her aged grandfather in the Swiss Alps.
In the late 1970s, at the height of apartheid, an animation of this story dubbed into Afrikaans caught the imagination of white children and parents alike. It became one of the most highly rated kiddies programmes ever shown on South African television.
Today a similar story of innocence on the outskirts of society is doing the rounds — but this time the little girl is African. The Alps are the hills of KwaZulu-Natal and the grandfather is replaced by a mother dying of Aids.
This is the acclaimed The Sky in Her Eyes, a short film directed by Ouida Smit and Madoda Ncayiyana and produced by Julie Frederikse of Vuleka Productions. While the story is proof that certain formulae are ageless, this aspect of tragedy in the face of the Aids pandemic is South African to a T.
Made as part of the Steps to the Future HIV-awareness television series, The Sky in Her Eyes has become a ground-breaking success story in the annals of local filmmaking. This year it won the Djibril Diop Mambety Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, awarded annually to the best African short film.
The work has received further accolades — it got special mentions at the Vues d’Afrique in Montreal and at the 13th annual Festival Cinema Africano in Milan. It has been selected for official programmes of a number of international film festivals.
Specialist audiences have seen the film at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the United Nations Special Session on Children and at the Barcelona Aids conference. Not bad for an 11-minute work that deliberately plays against the sensationalist aspect of child orphans battling to eke out a life in rural Africa.
It is in the downplaying of tragedy that The Sky in Her Eyes becomes an effective tool for drawing attention to the plight of children who head up households where adults have died of Aids-related illness. This is not some gritty look at the underbelly of society, but a palatable fictionalisation of a key moment in the life of an African child.
A young girl (Zama Hlangu) plays with her dying mother (Beatrice Dlamini) whom she later nurses to the point of death. Left alone, she toils through life, fetching water, encountering the scathing of neighbours and playing with a friend (Nkosi Mkhulisi).
The girl draws a picture of her mother, a stick figure, which she and her friend pin to a kite. The kite soars into the sky. An African fireside tale is told, in voice-over, of how the sky is the parent of the universe.
It is in this small ritual of parting that the girl is able to return her mother to the elements. Ultimately it is a child’s symbolic funeral for a parent who has succumbed to disease.
This month cinemagoers have had the chance to see The Sky in Her Eyes as a prelude to The Whale Rider. Distributor Ster-Kinekor has made 10 35mm prints available, and audiences have been enthralled at the synchronicities of both plots.
Last week Ster-Kinekor conducted an audience poll of responses to The Sky in Her Eyes and discovered that, on a scale of 10 audiences rated the film 7,14. The distributor has announced that the film will also be used as part of its corporate social investment screenings to charities and groups that it has aligned itself to.
The Sky in Her Eyes has already been seen by more than 60 000 filmgoers. And given the success of The Whale Rider, directed by New Zealander Niki Caro, this short work will be on circuit for a good long while yet.
Meanwhile, Vuleka has announced that it is developing the project into a feature film to be directed hopefully by Ncayiyana next year.
The Sky in Her Eyes will be shown at the Three Continents Film Festival in Johannesburg in September.