The raw material of the documentary filmmaker is misery. The fallout of war, the false hopes of the poor, the battle for survival of almost lost animal species, the territorial skirmishes of underprivileged youth, the painful dissolution of the traditional family and more.
Crafting this misery into entertainment is the documentary filmmakers’ lot. They take us with them on journeys fraught with doubt as, frame for frame, we witness the construction of the work. Even if you don’t appreciate their political views, you’ve got to love them for the commitment to their craft.
Having sat through all eight Encounters documentary film festivals, albeit in my lounge on preview tapes, I am convinced that of all the festivals we’re privileged to have, this is The One. In short, the programme tells us that this year there are 56 titles, including a record number of 20 local works.
In the early days of South African television, the nation’s understanding of the documentary form was based largely on the Thames Television series The World at War. Week upon week (26 in all) we sat glued to the box as cadavers piled up in faraway Europe. Mum knitted and dad puffed on his pipe sternly as Lord Lawrence Olivier’s exquisite narration droned on.
The world’s most acclaimed documentary, it seemed, had been made by God himself.
Today the divine presence is very much out the picture and the handmade aspect of the documentary is in. There is scarcely a work on the festival that isn’t narrated in first person by the director. Stock in trade is the cellphone. There are hours of conversations in moving cars with evasive, guilty parties adamant that they are not to be filmed. Nick Broomfield is the master of the genre — “his idiosyncratic style of filmmaking has been called not so much fly on the wall as fly in the soup”.
When Broomfield arrives as a festival guest, perhaps someone will ask him what it is about the simpletons of the far right that keep him coming back for more. Broomfield’s recent work, His Big White Self, is a follow-up to his earlier look at Eugene Terreblanche in The Leader, His Driver and the Driver’s Wife.
Watching His Big White Self, locals will experience a sort of sick nostalgia for the chubby, red necks poking out of self-important safari suits. But Broomfield is a master of redemption, and he befriends the most unlikely of characters. This “apparently bumbling and chaotic Englishman who disarms his subjects”, as he’s referred to, finds worthy qualities in all his adversaries.
It is interesting that we need Broomfield to remind us about the unfinished business on the road to reconciliation.
In his feature-length Biggie and Tupac, we journey with Broomfield to the violent neighbourhoods of Los Angeles to solve the murders of two pioneering rappers whose friendship turned to hate. The danger is palpable as Broomfield “bumbles” along with denizens of the LA underground, asking uncomfortable questions and following kingpin music producer and gang leader Marion “Sug” Knight into prison for a one on one.
“Before you make a film you always imagine the worst case scenario, because you need to,” says Broomfield in the DVD commentary to his work. “I’d go into neighbourhoods that people felt I had no right to be in. In fact, I had no right to be there. The decision is ‘do I want to make this film?’ Obviously, if you decide to make the film, you have to go where the film takes you.”
And so, along with these gung ho heroes of the form, we travel to Guantanamo Bay with Swedish directors Erik Gandini and Tarik Sale in Gitmo: The New Rules of War; war-ravaged Iraq with James Longley in Iraq in Fragments, and the jungle of Aceh, which is occupied by brutal Indonesian forces, with Australian William Nessen in The Black Road.
In the introduction to his sceptical work Saddam Hussein: The Trail, French director Jean-Pierre tells us that he wanted to treat this momentous historical event “not with tone, or style of reportage, but as a kind of political novel”.
In an earlier interview, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Dan Krauss, whose movie The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club is also on the menu, said deceased photographer Carter’s work “addresses one of the most important moral dilemmas of our time: whether it is better to document or to intervene in acts of violence and suffering”.
The two panel discussions happening in conjunction with the festival, although about race and identity, will no doubt touch on this aspect of the craft.
The eighth Encounters South African International Documentary Festival runs at Nu Metro, Hyde Park Corner in Johannesburg, from July 14 to 23 and at Nu Metro at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town from July 21 to August 6. The panel discussion “Race and Identity in Filmmaking in South Africa” takes place in Johannesburg on July 19 at 6.30pm and in Cape Town on August 3 at 6.30pm. Johannesburg panelists include SABC commissioning editor Beathur Baker, Sipho Singiswa of the Black Filmmakers’ Network, producer and director Angus Gibson and filmmaker Khalo Matabane. The event will be facilitated by actor Tony Kgoroge. Entrance for the discussions is free, but booking is essential. For more information call (021) 465 4686 or (021) 461 6964, or log on to www.encounters.co.za
Leila Khaled: The good terrorist?
The title of the film, Leila Khaled Hijacker, tells only half the story. Leila Khaled was the first woman plane hijacker — of TWA flight 840 in 1969. Young, sexy and beautiful, she captured the world’s attention. Then, a year later, after plastic surgery to change her appearance, she did it again. Now the film’s eponymous heroine or villain, depending on your perspective, is heading for South Africa with the same mission: to draw attention to the suffering of the Palestinian people.
Formally, she will accompany Lina Makboul’s film as it makes its debut at the Encounters: Eighth South African International Documentary Festival that opens in Johannesburg on July 14. But she hopes to add to the call that, earlier this week, was led by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African Council of Churches (SACC) for the ending of diplomatic relations with Israel in protest at the current military campaign in Gaza.
Speaking to the Mail & Guardian from her home in Amman, Jordan, ahead of her visit to South Africa, Khaled said that her purpose was “to raise awareness of the facts of the conflict to South African leaders and to ask them to take steps against the apartheid regime of Israel and the terrorist attacks against our people”.
No doubt some will latch on to the irony of the world’s first woman hijacker using the word “terrorist”. In response, she draws a sharp distinction between the political objectives of her actions and what she calls the contemporary “culture of death”. “I am a victim of the Zionists who occupied my country. In 1967 I was kicked out with many others. I have the right to resist. We were given very strict instructions not to hurt anyone. We reached the goals of the tactic: the world asked ‘why and who?’ and the answer came in the form of our revolution.”
Khaled’s visit is timely. As Israel continues its reign of terror in Gaza on the pretext of the capture of an Israeli soldier, the Cosatu/SACC statement enjoined the debate about what is and is not a legitimate expression of the “right to resist”: “Let us be clear: the Palestinian operation was not a ‘terrorist attack’; its target was not civilians; it was deliberately planned against a military target. And the soldier is not an Israeli child kidnapped off an Israeli street, he is a soldier with the fourth largest army in the world, engaged in a war against a civilian population and captured while he was in active duty in that war.”
Pressure is growing on Pretoria to, at the very least, withdraw its ambassador from Tel Aviv. Khaled is not the first to invite parallels with the South African struggle for justice, and nor will she be the last: “Our people are suffering in the same way, from racist occupiers. As with the isolation of the apartheid regime, so the world can now do the same thing with Israel.”
The filmmaker is also a Palestinian exile. As a child, Makboul idolised Khaled, but found that adulthood brought more complex questions relating to Palestinian strategy and tactics and “Khaled the myth”. Khaled is keen to answer these and other questions: Why did she do it? Did she achieve her objectives? Does she regret anything? What are the parameters of the “right to resist”? What is her attitude to suicide bombing?
Perhaps a South African will ask the question that in the face of the simple dignity of the now-60-odd-year-old woman, Makboul found that she could not ask: “Did you give the Palestinians a bad reputation?” — Richard Calland
Leila Khaled Hijacker will be shown as part of the Encounters documentary film festival. Go to www.encounters.co.za for more information