It is a happy coincidence that, in the year that the Encounters documentary film festival coincides with Women’s Day, new works by top women filmmakers have been used to launch the event.
Audiences unaccustomed to watching actuality in the confines of the cinema may have caught Beverly Palesa Ditsie and Ngaire Blankenberg’s documentaries, some time over the past month, at home on TV. This is the fruit of the strengthened relationship between the festival and the SABC. Another upside of the partnership has been a recommitment by women filmmakers to the well-worn themes of identity, race and the quest for self-actualisation.
Blankenberg’s hour-long Morris Fynn Goes Native is upbeat and offbeat in its tackling of identity through issues of race and land dispossession. Morris Fynn’s main quest is to reclaim the land that he inherited from his forebears. It was King Shaka himself who gave Fynn’s Irish ancestor land and made him a chief. After the destruction of the Zulu empire, the South African Union gave the land to the Luthuli family and the Fynns, like many racially mixed people, who were branded coloured, were moved to Wentworth. Fynn, however, remained close to the village of his ancestors and is determined to reclaim the chieftaincy.
Blankenberg plays researcher, journalist and historian, lending idiosyncrasy and wit to the story.
Ultimately, as Fynn discovers, he needs historical evidence to prove that the land once belonged to his family. To aggravate matters, he needs to get support from the disintegrated and dispossessed coloured community to approve his chieftaincy. And so Blankenberg and Fynn set out on their journey to elicit support for Fynn’s plight.
The work would have benefited from better camera work and perhaps some archival material, but Blankenberg’s engaging performance compensates for this. She is clearly on a quest of healing and self-discovery. There are interesting montage sequences in which she uses herself, in various disguises, to demonstrate different shades of black. What this film shows is the fact that there is not one single image alone that defines the identity of the coloured woman.
Ditsie’s A Family Affair chronicles the history of the Makhene family. The most well-known is Blondie Makhene, who became a successful township bubblegum musician during the apartheid era. Prior to the demise of apartheid, Makhene began singing freedom songs about doyens of the political struggle. But it is not Blondie’s story that holds this film together. Ditsie’s work is about his children. Here is a household of four women who are African feminists, his three daughters and wife.
The documentary opens in lush Jo’burg suburbia and, to sweet a cappella chanting, we are introduced to the family. As the synopsis puts it: “For the extrovert Makhene daughters, the world is their oyster. But when their mother dies and their father remarries, their world crumbles.” Ditsie’s work makes this tragedy into something quite beautiful.
The loss of a mother, the acceptance of the ancestral calling, sexuality, sensuality, the new stepmother and a troubled adolescent who goes on a drug binge are the plot elements of this sentimental, yet refreshing, documentary. There isn’t anything new about these themes, but what makes this film compelling to watch is the pure, untainted energy that the three sisters exude.
Not long after the passing of their mother, Le Toya, a very natural diva who, amid the bright glamour, gloss and bling-bling, is called to serve the ancestors and twasa. She experiences illnesses where even Western-trained doctors are unable to detect what it is she suffers.
Le Toya accepts her fate, or calling, and goes to serve. But, as many black Africans know, this is no easy journey. One could go on to debate whether the film sufficiently provides adequate tension and conflict to allow an audience to understand the gruelling experience of such a journey because, remember, these young women are New Age and urban.
Apart from the richness of the themes, a lot of archival material and good camera work helps to enhance the story. The actors are easily conversant in both indigenous and colonial languages, making them quite accessible to the viewer. What Ditsie has, perhaps, managed to do, is open the debate about the impact of African tradition versus modernity — and in so doing have given us a treat of a story.
Encounters runs at Cinema Nouveau, Rosebank, in Jo’burg from August 5 to 14. Tel: (021) 465 4686 or go to www.encounters.co.za