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Screen Africa February edition
SECTION: Documentary
FILENAME: Black On White
HEADING: Playing the race card
BY LINE: Brian Paseka Letlhabane
If truth be told, from Jamie Uys' The Condemned Are Happy to Oliver Schmitz's High Jack Stories, South African stories about black people are often told through the lens of a white filmmaker. So, when the Close Encounters Documentary Laboratory, in partnership with SABC1, decided in 2003 to come up with a series of five 48-minute documentaries called Black on White, five black documentary filmmakers could not wait to get their hands on the project.
It was the proposals of these five filmmakers that managed to grab the attention of the SABC. In a make-believe industry, where the truth is often shadowed by perspectives, these filmmakers, Omelga Mthiyane, Vincent Moloi, Rehad Desai, Sipho Singiswa and Yunus Valley would get a chance to reverse the lens and make documentaries about white people.
"In a society where we still tread very carefully around the difficult issue of race and racism, we have invited criticism from all quarters for commissioning this series," said Sylvia Vollenhoven, head of genre factual at the SABC Content Hub.
With its political connotations, the project would allow these filmmakers to question and analyse the subtle consequences of SA's institutionalised racism. Using the tools of their craft, they would undoubtedly find themselves knee-deep in apartheid's ideological victories, notions and myths that have kept a nation in bondage more than a decade after its first democratic elections.
But, before approaching the treacherous cemetery of apartheid, a legacy upon which lucrative empires, corporations and institutions were ruthlessly built, the filmmakers had to go through a series of script development workshops. New York University professor, Emmy Award-winning producer and the editor of some of Spike Lee's films, Sam Pollard, would head two of the script development workshops.
Varied perspectives
Responding to what he hopes people will learn from his documentary, Vincent Moloi said: "I can't teach when I am only starting a learning process myself. But my intention is to lure frank and honest debate from a different perspective. The audience or viewer is equally under scrutiny by themselves just like my character is by the camera, the only difference is that we are all watching him on the box. So this is a three-way experience between the filmmaker, character and the viewer," explained Moloi, whose documentary, Men of Gold, observes the marginalised lives of white, faux jewellery sellers as they strive to earn a living in the concrete jungles of inner-city Johannesburg, post 1994.
In his documentary, Inja Yomlungu! (The White Man's Dog!), Sipho Singiswa revisits the much talked about relationship between white people and their dogs. In the documentary, Singiswa questions the notion that white people have often placed more value on their dogs than on black people.
"Through this topic, I explore elements of racism and socio-economic differences in the country. I also strive to understand why it is that so many white people are so intensely attached to their dogs. Part of me begins to believe that it is because of the breakdown of community, extended family and ubuntu in the white individualistic culture, that makes so many white people rely on their dogs for company. Many are old couples, divorcées or widowers whose children have left them and they are lonely. Their dogs are their only companions," he said.
With The Heart of Whiteness, director Rehad Desai visits the only town in SA where the temptation of cheap black labour is resisted like the plague - the racially acclaimed town of Orania. Bought by a group Afrikaner prophets of doom in 1990, to this day, only white people are allowed to reside and work in Orania's well kept houses, manicured lawns and bountiful agricultural fields.
"In many ways Orania represents the logical conclusion of a white identity prevalent throughout SA. In this sense, Orania is the norm rather than the exception as whiteness is something that first and foremost resides inside the head. It's part of the past, or an attempt to entrench the present, rather than a look at the future," he explained.
Colour blind
Another controversial documentary is Yunus Valley's The Glow of White Women. Inspired by Lewis Nkosi's controversial novel Mating Birds, the documentary critically engages with its subject of white females by re-inventing a period where white girls explored their identities through black men during the apartheid years. The documentary is also a journey to understand white women, who they are, their history and where they come from by focusing on the SA experience.
"The documentary deals with the social construction of white women and why apartheid was so terrified with the idea of black men being friendly with white women. Apart from giving an overview of the history of white women in SA, the story also seeks to engage with whiteness in a genuinely critical way to create a dialogue about race theory," said Valley, whose documentary will also look at the subtle representations of the ideal white woman in SA cinema and the media in general.
In her documentary, Different Pigment, Omelga Mthinyane tells the story of a white young man, Alex 'Mjy' Botha, as he prepares to get married to his 16-year-old black girlfriend, Thandeka.
"They are not from different cultures, they both embrace the Zulu culture, but their skin pigmentation is different, Mjy is white and Thandeka is black. He is unemployed but believes in self-employment and plans to start his own business one day," commented Mthinyane.
Even though the White on Black documentary series is bound to raise eyebrows, Vollenhoven said she was proud of the five filmmakers and the delicacy with which they handled their subjects. "Some people feared it would be a retaliatory, racist attack on white people and on the other hand, some black people have said we are focussing on a non-issue, that black storytellers are not preoccupied with turning the lens on white people. But fortunately the films have risen above these attacks and are sincere, thought-provoking and occasionally funny insights into our relationships with each other," she said.
Black on White's co-executive producer, Steven Markovitz of Encounters also agreed that it was important for these kinds of documentary projects to be seen on national television. "The series represents a significant contribution to the discourse around race and representivity in SA. How do black people really feel about white people and how do they perceive them? These debates around race represent a necessary, even if uncomfortable, contribution to the spiritual and political well-being of the country. Let us make sure that these debates are not only happening in the newspaper columns and are also taking place on television," he said.
With the exception of The Glow of White Women, which will be shown later in the year due to its co-production deal with the BBC, the Black on White series began airing on SABC1 on 6 February.
Posted on Tuesday 7 Feb 2006
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