Abstract
The revival in short filmmaking in post-apartheid cinema has thus far received little attention by academic scholars. The article is an attempt to describe, contextualise and analyse the highlights of South African short filmmaking by focusing on thematic and aesthetic developments in post-apartheid cinema. Hundreds of short fiction and nonfiction films have been made in South Africa since 1980. The themes of most of these films were initially limited to anti-apartheid texts, which were instruments in the anti-apartheid struggle. During the late 1980s and early 1990s short filmmakers have also explored themes other than apartheid, for example equal rights for gay and lesbian South Africans. Many short filmmakers have since 1994 experimented with form and aesthetics, as well as various narrative structures, including oral storytelling. Future studies of post-apartheid cinema need to take the revival of short filmmaking in South Africa into account. Exciting directorial voices (male or female, gay or heterosexual, and from various language groups) such as Garth Meyer, Dumisani Phakhati, Willem Grobler, Teboho Mahlatsi, Justin Puren, Inger Smith, Johan Nel, Nina Mnaya and John Warner hold immense promise for future feature filmmaking in post-apartheid South Africa.
Highlights
The revival in short filmmaking in post-apartheid cinema has far received little attention by academic scholars
The themes of most of these films were initially limited to anti-apartheid texts, which were instruments in the anti-apartheid struggle (Botha, “South Africa”)
Confronting the past and the present. Another important theme in post-apartheid cinema is how South Africans are dealing with the traumatic past and how they are adjusting to the dramatic socio-political changes in contemporary South African society
Summary
1994 saw the birth of democracy in South Africa the South African film industry is much older, our great documentary film tradition dates back to 1896 and the South African War or Anglo Boer War. Surprisingly only a few books have been published regarding the history of one of the oldest film industries in the world and one of the largest on the African continent. Between black political mobilisation and a state attempting to manage a disintegrating economy existed another reality -- an embattled white working class struggling to defend a way of life in the face of loss of privilege based on race Against this background, Guy Spiller’s short film The Boxer (1990) explored the effect which wider socio-political changes in South African society had wrought in the intimate space of a white working-class family in Johannesburg. Regional initiatives further encouraged short film production The former Cape Film and Video Foundation and the South African Scriptwriters Association (SASWA) in collaboration with the National Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology funded three short films, entitled Kap an Driver, a beautiful exploration of racial relations in the “new” South Africa; On the Rocks, about an affluent white man’s encounter with Cape Town’s homeless people; and Stompie and the Red Tide, about Cape Town’s homeless. Mattera (Max and Mona), Andre Odendaal (Skilpoppe), Tim Greene (Boy called Twist), Riaan Hendricks (A Fisherman’s Tale), Khalo Matabane (Chikin Biz’nis, Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon), Jason Xenopoulos (Promised Land), Madoda Ncayiyana (The Sky in Her Eyes, A Child is a child), Portia Rankoane (Tsietsi, My Hero), Thabang Moleya (Portrait of a Dark Soul, Case 474), Willem Grobler (Considerately Killing Me), Louis du Toit (When Tomorrow Calls), Tristan Holmes (Elalini), Garth Meyer (Killer October, Bitter Water), Inger Smith (The One that fits inside the Bathtub, Love Poem), Harold Holscher (iBali, ‘n Sprokie), Neill Blomkamp (Alive in JHB), Dean Blumberg (Under the Rainbow, Black Sushi), John Warner (Note to Self), Brett Melvill-Smith (Tracks), Bryan Little (Tagging Toilets), Nina Mnaya (Life is Hard), Matthew Cowles (The Tooth Fairy) and Norman Maake (Soldiers of the Rock, Homecoming)
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