Inside the South African film festival… | Little White Lies

Festivals

Inside the South African film fes­ti­val chal­leng­ing per­cep­tions of Afrikaans cinema

25 Sep 2023

Words by John Besche

B&W image shows a group of people at a formal event. An older woman in a satin dress speaks with a smiling man.
B&W image shows a group of people at a formal event. An older woman in a satin dress speaks with a smiling man.
Now in its eleventh year, Cape Town’s Sil­w­erskermfees aims to shine a light on the diver­si­ty and tal­ent at the heart of the Afrikaans-speak­ing film­mak­ing community.

At the end of an unusu­al­ly cold win­ter, hordes of Afrikaans speak­ers descend­ed upon the ritzy Cape Town beach­front com­mu­ni­ty of Camps Bay to cel­e­brate this year’s achieve­ments in Afrikaans-lan­guage tele­vi­sion and cin­e­ma. Brought to you (most­ly) by kykNET, Afrikanerdom’s answer to HBO, this was the eleventh annu­al Sil­w­erskermfees. Pro­nounced sil­ver-scare em-fayiss’, which is Afrikaans for sil­ver screen fest,” the SSF plat­formed twen­ty-five films that prob­a­bly made many atten­dees’ fore­bears roll over in the grave.

Afrikaans is one of con­tem­po­rary South Africa’s eleven co-equal offi­cial lan­guages. But 30 years ago, it was the pri­ma­ry lan­guage of the apartheid state, a mor­bid lega­cy that this fes­ti­val and most of the born free” gen­er­a­tion of Afrikaans speak­ers are try­ing to rec­ti­fy, or at least re-frame. For con­text, most Afrikaans speak­ers aren’t white – Afrikaans is the most even­ly racial­ly and geo­graph­i­cal­ly dis­trib­uted of the country’s lan­guages and it has more native speak­ers than South African Eng­lish (reflect­ing this, the Sil­w­erskermfees board is mul­tira­cial). A daugh­ter lan­guage” of Dutch, it’s con­sid­ered one of the youngest lan­guages in the world. It’s also a touchy source of pride. Char­l­ize Theron – arguably the most famous speak­er of her native Afrikaans – mem­o­rably sparked out­rage in Mzan­si when she sug­gest­ed that die taal [Afrikaans] was on its way out.

Love it or hate it, Afrikaans is an inte­gral part of South Africa’s nation­al iden­ti­ty and its cin­e­ma. And, in a way, its place in soci­ety sig­nals some­thing about how and where South Africa has suc­ceed­ed and failed to actu­al­ize Desmond Tutu’s Rain­bow Nation” con­cept. I’ll be hon­est, I rolled my eyes a lit­tle when I found out that SSF would be held in Camps Bay. Osten­si­bly, the fes­ti­val exists to reflect who actu­al­ly speaks Afrikaans while nur­tur­ing gen­uine depic­tions of every­day South African life – some­thing that was impos­si­ble under apartheid. These noble aims sit at odds with Camps Bay, which looks like Cannes at first glance – but wan­der a lit­tle deep­er past the man­sions, the dou­ble-parked Bugat­tis, and the ocean­front cafés push­ing ten-month-aged Sancerre and you’ll see that it’s…a lot like Cannes.

The steps of the Bay Hotel, home base for the SSF, gird the main drag (the beach) like a pala­tial wel­come mat against the 750-meter-high Twelve Apos­tles. The SSF cel­e­brates a strange­ly beau­ti­ful lan­guage – though some say it’s an acquired taste – and its com­mend­able invest­ments in the arts promised an oppor­tu­ni­ty to rev­el in some of the best of the new South Africa. It also seemed a poten­tial case study in every­thing that’s wrong with the new South Africa – ram­pant inequal­i­ty and tone-deaf rep­re­sen­ta­tion for exam­ple. Prove me wrong,” I thought to myself. Still, attend­ing was worth a shot, if noth­ing else, to bust out my Afrikaans.

But Goeie dag! How are you?” floored me at check-in. The bilin­gual greet­ing stan­dard to Euro­pean hos­pi­tal­i­ty is prac­ti­cal­ly nonex­is­tent in South Africa, where peo­ple of all races are pre­sumed anglo­phone until proven oth­er­wise. Though all the films had sub­ti­tles and every­one was per­fect­ly flu­ent in Eng­lish, the parade of pink fes­ti­val lan­yards spir­it­ed Camps Bay – a neigh­bor­hood so cos­mo that even my Amer­i­can accent fails to raise an eye­brow – into Kamps­baai, where the white noise was import­ed from a Karoo town called some­thing-bos-fontein.

Not want­i­ng to imme­di­ate­ly blow my cov­er, I grabbed a glass of Brut and plant­ed myself on a beach-fac­ing bean bag next to two hip-look­ing Afrikan­ers. They asked me what I was drink­ing, in Afrikaans — most­ly to humor me — and when I told them it was MCC, they grabbed some for them­selves. We tjors-ed [the Afrikaans equiv­a­lent of cheers] to the bub­bly pride of the Cape. MCC, or méth­ode cap clas­sique, is South Africa’s cham­pagne, almost lit­er­al­ly. It’s a sparkling wine of West­ern Cape ori­gin that under­goes a sec­ond in-bot­tle fer­men­ta­tion à la cham­p­enoise. This Blaauwk­lip­pen Brut was light, deli­cious, and at fes­ti­vals like this, con­ducive to say­ing the qui­et part out loud.

I asked point blank what the fes­ti­val meant for the future of the not-fast-grow­ing, his­tor­i­cal­ly apartheid-adja­cent Afrikaans language.

It’s evolv­ing,” said actor and film­mak­er Luan Jacobs, because I think it’s very self-aware.”

Rikus Strauss, also an actor, added that in the past fif­teen or so years, Afrikaans tele­vi­sion and cin­e­ma was large­ly fix­at­ed on the past. He said he was glad to be a part of a shift toward sto­ry­telling that’s more inclu­sive, but also pre­oc­cu­pied with real day-to-day life which, in turn, is more inclusive.

A lot of peo­ple get stuck on Afrikaans as pre­dom­i­nant­ly white,” Strauss said. The Afrikaans boer and like that type of cul­ture. And it’s not.”

Two people sitting by a swimming pool, surrounded by palm trees and enjoying the warm, sunny atmosphere.

Strauss said he had seen a film just the oth­er night about a coloured com­mu­ni­ty he wasn’t famil­iar with. It was impor­tant to him that I knew he was still learn­ing about the diver­si­ty of peo­ple who speak his lan­guage even into adulthood.

As for the South Africans who are appre­hen­sive about engag­ing with Afrikaans media because of apartheid asso­ci­a­tions, Luan and Rikus were a lit­tle tak­en aback, but excit­ed to think it over in real time.

It’s hard because the answer is not def­i­nite,” Jacobs said. There is no answer to that, that any­one has suc­ceed­ed [in bridg­ing] the gap of How do we speak to each oth­er in this coun­try?’ I always have this fun­ny way of look­ing at South Africans as Yeah, we can dis­agree but if some­one goes up against us, we go by tjom [chum], I got your back.’

Anoth­er film tjom­mie — the Afrikaans film world is small enough that everyone’s your tjom­mie after a glass or two of MCC — joined our con­ver­sa­tion mid­way through. Zack Mtombeni is orig­i­nal­ly from Free State, which, long sto­ry short, is poes Boer, and he’s one of many Black actors to work in Afrikaans.

To the Afrikaans-wary, Mtombeni says, Change the peo­ple that you hang around with, because they keep rein­forc­ing that negativity.

It is very unfor­tu­nate that they’ve had the expe­ri­ence that they had, and it’s not to deval­ue the expe­ri­ence they’ve had, but now it’s more reha­bil­i­tat­ing,” Mtombeni, whose first lan­guage is SeSotho, added.

Except for the come­dies I sat through and didn’t under­stand — moet Afrikaans wees [got­ta be Afrikaans] to get the jokes, my friends told me — a lot of the films on the dock­et felt reha­bil­i­tat­ing, or at least truth-telling. The doc­u­men­tary Teater Na Die Mense,” or The­atre to the Peo­ple,” recount­ed the Cape Flats Play­ers’ hard-fought wield­ing of the apartheid régime’s lan­guage to empow­er the coloured com­mu­ni­ties it oppressed. Its sub­jects some­times spoke in Kaaps, the Cape Coloured Afrikaans dialect, and eulo­gized coloured play­wright Adam Small whose works like Kan­na hy kô Hys­toe” are now taught in schools. Spin­ners,” a pres­tige TV show that pre­miered at the fes­ti­val, brought Kaaps and the Cape Flats to a present-day plagued by new sys­tems of oppression.

Tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties gave the audi­ence a few min­utes to unpack the expos­i­to­ry scenes of Spin­ners” over a drink on the house. I chat­ted with a cou­ple of pro­duc­tion folks en route to the bar and they told me a bit about film­ing the show on-loca­tion in Laven­der Hill, a Cape Town com­mu­ni­ty whose rep­u­ta­tion for gang vio­lence pre­cedes it. They said mat­ter-of-fact­ly that one of their local part­ners was mur­dered ear­ly on in pro­duc­tion. But we got a week off!” a crewmem­ber joked, shak­ing off the ten­sion. Her laugh betrayed a South African-ness as galling as our prox­im­i­ty to Laven­der Hill — only ten miles as the crow flies. That spe­cif­ic spa­tial ten­sion, and the lev­i­ty need­ed to make sense of it, makes South African cin­e­ma so South African.

Broad­ly speak­ing, ten­sion — spa­tial or oth­er­wise — is the his­to­ry of South Africa.

Many Afrikan­ers have spent the last few decades decou­pling cen­turies of hyper-reli­gios­i­ty from the prob­lems and oppor­tu­ni­ties of moder­ni­ty. On and off screen, Afrikan­er­dom often per­sists in ten­sion with itself — con­sult Koos Kom­buis for more. Thanks to my Afrikan­er best friend and plus one, nowhere was this clear­er than at the awards gala bring­ing four days of Afrikaans immer­sion to a close.

Exceed­ing­ly in her ele­ment, my friend parsed the crowd and the hors d’oeuvres for shib­bo­leths of Afrikan­er life that would have gone over my head, such as the pos­ture of the Real House­wife of the Winelands hold­ing court on the smok­ing deck, or that the choco­late-cov­ered sponge cakes rolled in coconut shav­ings are called Yster­varkies [por­cu­pines] here, nev­er Lamingtons…only a Sokkie song could mend the gen­er­a­tional divide on the dance floor.

Like the films them­selves, her insights spoke to where Afrikaans stands in pub­lic life — qui­et­ly omnipresent, past and future unre­solved. As for the SSF and the Rain­bow Nation, Luan Jacobs thinks the child­hood neigh­bor he called oom [uncle] would have been proud: “[Nel­son Man­dela] would have loved it. I think he would speak at this fes­ti­val in Afrikaans, in Zulu, in Sotho, in every­thing. He would have loved this.”

The more casu­al par­ty the night before, a mas­ter class in how (ex) Calvin­ists cut loose, gave some cre­dence to that. The Bay Hotel bal­cony became a prom after­par­ty, blast­ing one cringe hit after anoth­er. The DJ queued Vuli Ndlela”1997 chart top­per whose title trans­lates to open the way” and stoked the Man­dela-era surge in South African pride.

Just like how a few bars of Sweet Car­o­line” can par­a­lyze a frat base­ment, when Vuli Ndlela” came on…everyone in the crowd, no mat­ter where they came from, lost their damn minds.

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