Durban City Bytes :
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Film
Durban International Film Festival
Beginning with my childhood, I will revisit Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander. I remember being spellbound watching the four part series as a child, maybe because the narrative is mediated through the children's eyes. Upon reflection I think the story of family, loss, death and the haunting of the ghost resonated with our own dislocation from the familiarity of home (South Africa) to the estranged liminal exile in Denmark and the imagined space that is more real to me than any of the continents.
Next I want to see what South Asian cinema has to offer. Especially Bengali filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta in The Window (Janala ) and in Homecoming which is said investigates the challenge in balancing modernity and traditional Indian values?I believe it's an experience we South Africans share at large.
It's most definitely a lived reality negotiated by the Indian Diaspora community in relation to changing cultural values within and beyond their own paradigm?really, it's a challenge of maintaining cultural values and coming to terms with the debris left in the wake of colonialism that we all face in the Tricontinent.
A film that really fascinates me is Steve Kwena Mokwena 's Driving With Fanon, which seems to offer a new generations insight and inspiration incited by the thoughts of seminal figures like Fanon. I'm looking forward to seeing how Mokwena has used art montages and hip hop to convey his story through an aesthetic lens that makes black consciousness discourse visible in the now. Returning home to South African documentary, here's one celebrating one of our own founders of the Black Consciousness Movement in Sons of the Sand - The Strii Moodly Interview Docc 88.
I find it imperative to know where we come from before we know where we going. I feel there is a need for us as South Africans to acknowledge the communal effort and shared experience in our liberation struggle that deals with anti-racism, anti-sexism and anti-nationalism? especially confronting the xenophobia we are recently experiencing. I believe Strini's story is one which we can draw strength from to overcome our differences. In Steve Biko's words, "In time, we shall be in a position to bestow on South Africa the greatest possible gift - a more human face."
