African Documentary Research Articles

Fault Lines: Journeys into the New South Africa

South Africa has experienced one of the world's most dramatic political transformations. David Goodman, a journalist and activist who has witnessed South Africa's struggles since the darkest days of apartheid, chronicles the historic transition from apartheid to democracy. This compelling story is told through the lives of four pairs of South Africans who have experienced apartheid from opposite sides of the racial and political divide. Taken together, these profiles provide the first in-depth look at the social dynamics of post-apartheid South Africa. Part social history and part personal drama, Fault Lines is an account of what happens to real people when their country is reinvented around them. The struggle to reconcile past evils is captured in the stories of a former police assassin and his intended victim. The rise and fall of South African racism is portrayed through the lives of the late Prime Minister H.F. Verwoerd - the notorious 'architect of apartheid' - and his grandson, now a member of the ruling African National Congress. The battle to break out of poverty is detailed in the story of two black women: one an impoverished domestic worker and new city councilor, the other a Mercedes-driving member of South Africa's new black elite. The struggle for the land is told through the eyes of two neighbors: a black farmer who was evicted from his lands in the 1980s and has returned to start over, and a conservative white farmer who participated in the eviction and now does business with the man whose life he nearly destroyed. These powerful stories are accompanied by the photography of award-winning South African documentary photographer Paul Weinberg.

Poor, White, South African

An exhibition of photographs, which opened in Johannesburg at Museum Africa in 1994, evoked a range of reactions from spectators and critics alike. subject of the show was poor, white South Africans. Historically, images depicting poverty in the South African documentary genre have been concerned with black poverty, principally because it is so prevalent. Of white poverty, there is only a small and sporadic record, mainly in select archives and in a small sample of the Carnegie Commission's inquiry into white poverty conducted during the depression in South Africa during the 1930s. It found that those who were white and poor had a tendency to cling to farm life. They were characterized by a limited outlook, by lack of ambition and enterprise and by timidity with regard to the outside world.(1) In consequence, feelings of inferiority were experienced by them and they bore their lot with dull and passive resignation. In contrast, there exists a most comprehensive and searing record of this nature in countries such as the United States and Great Britain; for example, Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives (1890), Paul Taylor and Dorothea Lange's An American Exodus (1939), James Agee and Walker Evans's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), Don McCullin's Perspectives (1996) and Eugene Richard's Below the Line: Living Poor in America (1987). These texts provide not only a document of the past, but also a precedent for photographers working in that genre. In photography of this nature there is always uneven allocation of power. That is, one must always question the ambition of the photographer in making such images. Indeed, the manner in which such images are perceived and received depends in part upon the photographer's relationship to his/her subject. exchange involves manipulation, submissions, as one reviewer remarked, The subject is made to pose and perform like a marionette.(2) Photographers' intentions in this regard and their implied comment about their subject is a crucial ingredient in the making of such images. For example, the photographs by Riis in How the Other Half Lives were intended to parallel the ugliness of the poverty he wished to depict. Therefore, he consciously attempted to produce images that would militate against artfulness in photography. Evans's photographs of sharecroppers also exemplify his sympathy for their predicament. Indeed, Evans's images were criticized for ennobling the plight of the poor. He depicts his subjects with authority and strength; the qualities of spirit and resilience are evident in Evans's portraits. Roger Ballen's publication, Platteland, exposes the plight of poor whites in South Africa. It was Ballen's intention to focus on the irony of a group of people whom, despite political privilege, have remained economically destitute. These images present a visual parallel for the alienation and immobility he observed. photographs appear unapologetically severe and uncompromising, yet there is a sadness conveyed by these images that indicates an essential aspect of the tragedy that pervades this troubled land.(3) is Afrikaans term for rural areas. Plattelanders, therefore, refers to country people who are regarded as unsophisticated and often narrow-minded.(4) A striking feature of the photographs in Platteland is Ballen's ability to penetrate the mask of self protection in order to expose a certain naivete and innocence of his subjects. This quality of stripping his subject's social facade is characteristic of the whole project. It is achievement to have gained access and photographed this group of people, since it is a subject that has been deliberately hidden from view. Most of the photographs are indoor shots. interiors act as indexes for the Plattelanders' tastes, values and social status. intimacy of the home and its status as a place of refuge act in a way that heightens the subjects' vulnerability. …

Fruits of defiance: narrating popular consciousness

Fruits ofDefiance is a South African documentary film made in 1989 by two film-makers Brian Tilley and Oliver Schmitz at time of Defiance Campaign that began in August of that year. The Defiance Campaign was launched by Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) in face of government's elections for its tricameral parliament, which sought to trade off 'coloured' and Indian support for a semblance of power in National Party government. A massive boycott of election was organised as well as worker stay-aways to protest against election, and supporters of MDM, in numerous mass actions across counhy, demonstrated their defmce of apartheidlawspaticularly inrelationtothegovernment's banningsofidividuals and organisations. These events included protest marches in all major cities of country and brought together largest mass alliance of anti-apartheid protesters across all sectors of South African society thus signalling the existence of a widespread political (Collinge 1989:6). This is political consciousness that Fruits of Defiance represents. It documentstheeventsthat occurredspecifically inManenbergontheCapeFlats, and places these withiithemacro socio-political context. It is an example ofthe many 'anti-apartheid' documentariesthat emergedinthe 1980sfrom withiithe movement of politically conscious documentary film-makers, and developed alongside popular political movements in counhy. This documentary movement was strongly linked to MDM, both in establishment of Film and Allied Workers Organisation (FAWO) in 1988, which aimed to unite and organise anti-apartheid film workers, and in documentary films and videos that were made. The documentary movement was not a homogeneous one, however, as term 'movement' might imply. Rather it had a number of diverse strands and trends as reflected in different film and video production units that were established in 1980s as well as in different styles that

Trends in South African documentary film and video: questions of identity and subjectivity

This paper focuses on the development of an anti‐apartheid documentary film and video ‘movement’ in the period spanning the late 1970s to the early 1990s. It discusses the growth of independent film‐making as well as a number of organisational developments, which formed the basis of this ‘movement’. The paper broadly describes some of the trends that have emerged and places these within a theoretical framework that identifies and examines questions of identity and subjectivity. It proposes that new theoretical work is needed to represent South African ‘hybridity’ and examines what seems to be a shift towards representing ‘hybridity’ in recent forms of anti‐apartheid documentary film and video.

Southern African Documentary Project in the US

Dr. Carter spoke of the plans of a group of American scholars with primary interests in southern Africa research to undertake, with the aid of a small Ford Foundation grant, a systematic program of identifying, classifying and micro-filming scattered and fragile southern African documentary resources held in the United States which have previously been largely inaccessible, and to co-ordinate this program with on-going efforts in South Africa, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. These plans build on discussions held at Northwestern University during the fall of 1971, when a score of American and South African scholars met twice to consider the most promising means of overcoming the existing difficulties in undertaking basic research in significant aspects of the complex South African experience. These difficulties have led in the past, with rare exceptions, to partial and often seriously unbalanced interpretations of historical and contemporary developments in southern Africa.

Politics of Integration: an East African documentary

Politics of Integration: an East African documentary

Closer Union in East Africa - Politics of Integration: An East African Documentary. Edited by Donald Rothchild. Nairobi: East African Publishing House, Nairobi, 1968. 25s.

Closer Union in East Africa - Politics of Integration: An East African Documentary. Edited by Donald Rothchild. Nairobi: East African Publishing House, Nairobi, 1968. 25<i>s</i>.