Local documentaries are getting more creative, more reflective – the days of talking heads are over, writes Andrew Worsdale
Post-1976 the surge of mass opposition to the state in South Africa led to the establishment of setups like the Community Video Resource Association and a Super- Eight co-op under the Community Arts Project in Cape Town. By 1984 major international funding led to a flood of films and videos examining socio-political issues. There was very little fiction, the South African film industry was ruled by frequently dry and didactic documentaries that played more overseas than locally – because their hard-hitting political points were used as agit-prop of a kind.
Nowadays, with the “opening” up of the SABC and the arrival of e.tv, local documentaries are getting more creative, more reflective, and have an increased sense of an authorial hand at work. Recently Zola Maseko’s acclaimed The Life and Times of Sara Baartman; The Furiosus, Liza Key’s film about Dimitri Tsafendas; and Francois Verster’s astoundingly intimate and brave portrait of Cape bergies, Pavement Aristocrats have forged a new look and feel to the South African reality-based movie.
Two examples of this fresher documentary approach can be found this week on the box in Khalo Matebane’s The Young Lions and Nicolaas Hofmeyr’s Main Reef Road.
In The Young Lions, Matebane traces the fortunes of three men who were political activists in Alexandra during the civil strife of the 1980s and particularly the township’s notorious “Six-Day War” in February 1986. Benito is now a precise and articulate lawyer working in the community, while Richmond is still an active African National Congress member and a senior administrator in local housing and Gorbachev, the most interesting person in the film, who didn’t reap the new-found benefits of being a freedom fighter decades ago, is now doing piece-meal jobs for a living. The three were teenagers who became generals in a rag-tag township army determined to undermine the state and liberate the masses.
Using archives, superb video camerawork by Giulio Biccari and Matthys Mocke and an incredibly moody score by Philip Miller, the 52-minute document of past and present lives manages to be far more than the factual sum of its parts. As Matabane says: “I think the main problem for young black filmmakers is how we portray people living in the urban ghettos, especially in the past, and not represent them as bad as the system itself. Writers like Ariel Dorfman have had a major influence on me,” Matabane says, “and so I always like to look at the emotional texture of a factual event and try to reflect that in the images and accompanying music. In this movie I kept on thinking of Paris Texas and Ry Cooder’s music and Robby Muller’s photography”
Hofmeyr’s Main Reef Road is as beautiful, if not more, to look at and is doubly entertaining because of its kitschy, comic appeal and the added intrigue of a real- life “murder” story interwoven into it. “Remember the Talking Heads song Heaven is a place … where nothing happens. Well Jo’burg is a place where everything happens,” Hofmeyr says to me via a fax from Indonesia where he’s part-owner of a 100- foot chartered yacht.
Hofmeyr’s movie is a marvellously entertaining look at the road from Springs to Westonaria with Johannesburg at its epicentre, as well as the people who live there. The main thread of the film is the director himself, who travelled the road for years and suddenly realised that what he was passing was material for a film.
As he journeys we meet Germiston city councillor Fernando Barados, Chantelle Van Zyl, the dazzlingly kitsch high-school girl from Boksburg – winner of 11 beauty contests including Miss Personality, Debutante, Springteen, and Miss Sunshine; she sings Dolly Parton karaoke-style and is also a champion rally driver.
But the strength of the film hinges on the East Rand mining community. Specifically squatter leader Lawrence “Rasta” Dube who, later in the documentary, is mysteriously murdered. Hofmeyr couldn’t have wished for a better hook – even as a fiction moviemaker.
It was a labour of love for the director and took over three years to make. Co- producer Paul Lindsay describes it as: “A great look at Johannesburg now. Warts and all. A splendid mess amidst the crumbling goldmines and re-mined dumps.”
The film was shot at a ratio of 60:1, all on 16mm and not on videotape which is no mean financial feat for a movie shot on a shoe-string. Hofmeyr says: “I survive on my work as a freelance cameraman/director [he’s a leading music video director] and make an OK living but I’d be reluctant to tackle another personal project like this again right now. I could roam on and on about broadcasters being so unstable – but things are improving especially since the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology has started funding the movie industry.”
Both documentaries illustrate that the days of talking heads are over – both films show directors as essayists, giving their personal and at the same time highly aesthetic take on our times and lives.
Main Reef Road shows on December 16 on e.tv at 8.30pm and The Young Lions shows on December 16 on SABC3 at 10pm