kagablog

matthew oats and eric miyeni in nice to meet you, please don’t rape me!
(photo derek bernstein)

Sean Fitzpatrick and Ian Kerkhof, two South Africans in exile, both made a film this year about their country now. Kerkhof’s Confessions of a Yeoville Rapist (Nice To Meet You, Please Don’t Rape Me!), recently broadcast by the VPRO’s Lolamoviola, is a hard and penetrating research into the violent nature of South Africa. Utilising three rapists, who gradually change character in the course of the film, Kerkhof attempts to expose the “rape culture” of his country, wherein rape represents more than the violent sexual act alone.

Fitzpatrick is in the final editing phase of That First Sunrise. With this documentary the photographer wanted to sketch an image of the inhabitants of South Africa. He travelled through the immense country with a Hi-8 camera in order to find out the truth about the land. His conversations with all sorts of people give us an idea about their vision of the future.

Fitzpatrick chose to make his recordings in the period before the elections of 27 April. Kerkhof shot precisely during the elections. The two projects seem miles away from each other, both in genre choice as well as form. But how big is the gap and what did both film makers want to achieve with their projects? Skrien brought the two compatriots together in order to discuss their films and the “new” South Africa.

Why did you go back to South Africa after so many years, armed with a camera?

Fitzpatrick: I had a number of questions that I could not get answers to out here. That is why I chose for the documentary form. It is not a political film, that’s why I chose not to use the elections in the film. It is a film about ordinary people and the way they live in South Africa. But in Ian’s film the elections hardly play any role either.

Kerkhof: Of course they’re there, but life goes on so to speak. The rhetoric about “historic milestones” is primarily a media concoction. For people on the ground the changes are not so apparent. In that sense, just as in Sean’s film, my film isn’t about politics, at least not about politics that are separated from daily life. Confessions of a Yeoville Rapist is also about ordinary people and their day to day lives.

Fitzpatrick: And the elections won’t change that day to day life very much. The violence is there to stay, in all its forms, from political to the criminal.

Both of you, as exiles, are outsiders. Did that make the filming easiers?

Fitzpatrick: Yes I think so. It’s because I know both that I am able to negotiate between the South African being interviewed and what the European audience wants to see.

Kerkhof: But that doesn’t mean that you’re not a South African anymore! I noticed that very quickly during the filming. I would have liked to have distanced myself from the material that we were researching and writing and improvising - after all I’m a European now, I don’t think like that - but the actors saw through me right away “Listen, even though you’ve lived away for 11 years, you’re just as South African as we are”. And they were right!

And what is that, a South African?

Kerkhof: That’s what my film explores and exposes. The South African is a shattered, sliced up person, violent and deceitful. South Africans have become used to not telling the truth. For all sorts of strategic reasons people have been compelled not to tell the truth - for example the truth about so-called black-on-black violence. It would be horrifying if the ANC, now that they are the government, will continue to uphold this tradition for strategic reasons. That is what people have to resist now. Now is the time to exercise the courage to look at things originally and independently despite strategic political concerns. Perhaps your film does that Sean?

Fitzpatrick: I think so. The interesting thing was that the ANC spokesman in our film despite his fascinating background ultimately came up with nothing but rhetoric. Which then formed a nice contrast with the other people interviewed who have become immune to rhetoric.

Kerkhof: But the point is that ANC people are just ordinary people, and that ordinary people have developed their own rhetoric. Everybody in South Africa talks with a double agenda. People are so used to double-speak that it often takes hours and hours before you get to anything real. They talk a lot but say very little. They either lie outright or say what they think you want to hear. They’re so cautious and suspicious that this is second nature to them.

Fitzpatrick: I call it South Africa’s “culture of deceit”. It’s a part of how we were brought up.

Kerkhof: What I don’t trust about your documentary is that people can never forget that they’re talking to a white man with a camera; and therefore they always create fictional characters of themselves.

Fitzpatrick: That’s true. At least it’s true of the politicians we interviewed. But it’s not true of people who are working selflessly for the future. With them we reached very quickly a point wherein they didn’t see me as a white man anymore and talked freely about their work and ideas and the future of South Africa. Naturally it didn’t always work out. But I think that when your interest as a film mkaer is genuine, then you receive genuine answers.

Kerkhof: That’s where we differ in opinion, because I don’t share your optimism. I don’t believe that you can breach the tremendous differences so quickly. I ask myself, given the 400 years of history weighing down on us, whether anyone can not see in you just another white man with a camera. There is always a game being played, I noticed this in all my research interviews. I’m not saying that it is impossible to breach this gap, but I don’t believe you can do it in a couple of interviews. That is why I chose a different form in my film. I didn’t want to be dependent, I didn’t want to be constantly hoping that people would tell the tuth.

That’s why you chose for the fiction form?

Kerkhof: Actually I don’t consider it a fiction film, in fact it is a documentary. Yes it does use actors, who perform explicitly as actors. I wrote the script with them. But most of the monologues were the result of sitting in bars for hours on end and just listening to people, talking to them and then taking notes afterwards. I also taped thirty hours worth of interviews with rapists and rape survivors and professionals who deal with rape counselling and guidance. Initially I wanted to incorporate the interviews into the scripted sections but that became too much time-wise. So perhaps the film has the form of a document rather than a traditional documentary. Because ultimately that is what I did: I documented my two months in South Africa, the film is a post card from South Africa, wherein I present the audience with my individual truth about the country.

Fitzpatrick: My point of departure was different: I wanted answers from the people there; answers to the questions that I had.

Kerkhof: But did you get them?

Fitzpatrick: Yes, but the film doesn’t make any conclusions, I want the audience to do that for themselves. It is a subjective film, like Ian’s, but I didn’t want it to be too personal because then a wide audience can’t follow it anymore. In that context I wonder whether your film will also be shown in South Africa?

Kerkhof: I hope so. In any event it will be shown at the Weekly Mail Festival and hopefully the Durban and Cape Town festivals too. But I doubt whether it will be broadcast on television.

Fitzpatrick: And was the film expressly meant for a European audience? For the VPRO audience?

Kerkhof: No, never. The VPRO put up the money, but Peter Morris, with whom I wrote the first version of the script, and the producer Jeroen Beker, and the actors, all decided early on that the film would be an authentic perspective from the inside. It was not a concern of ours whether people who had not lived in South Africa would understand the film or not. I am so sick of films like Elaine Proctor’s Friends, films which renounce their own cultural identity, films that simplify, films that iron away all the ugly creases…And that just so that the Europeans will be able to understand things because the Europeans put up the production money. Fuck that. I refuse to do that. South Africa is inaccessible and impossible to understand! Furthermore it is never necessary in a film to catch all the references, and in my film I’m content if you just get the general feeling of fear and loneliness that is so intense in South Africa.

We made the film that we wanted to make, a film that reflects what South Africa is and who and what we are. But of course there is a paradox here because I would like everyone in South Africa to see the film. But I know that will never happen, if only because of its form, because of the experiment with formal means. For example we made exclusive use of wide and extreme wide angle lenses and the narrative form was a bricolage which prevents the possibility of audience identification with the three characters. But this sort of formal experimentation doesn’t appeal to many people.

Fitzpatrick: But isn’t that a pity There is so little in the way of South African film. Isn’t it a shame that the impact of the film’s message is so diffused?

Kerkhof: You mean by the complex form?

Fitzpatrick: Yes, because that makes the film difficult to broadcast. Which is a shame because your film is in many ways important for South African film history.

Kerkhof: But if I had chosen for a simple form the film wouldn’t have been interesting. Certainly it wouldn’t have been interesting for me to make it. I am just not interested in making films that aren’t formally challenging. Other people can do that.

Fitzpatrick: I don’t think I agree with you. I think that with the same formal choices you could have made a much more accessible film.

Kerkhof: But how?

Fitzpatrick: Maybe with a few changes to the content. What do you think the reasons are that the SABC, South African television, wouldn’t broadcast the film?

Kerkhof: To begin with the obscenity. Perhaps they could deal with the formal structure but not with the blasphemy, obscenity and sacrilege and slander. But what would the film consist of if you cut that all out? Perhaps a three minute video clip. So there isn’t really a solution to your problem. The film is the way it is because it deals with certain issues. And it is precisely because the film exposes these issues in the way it does that it can’t be shown in the country where those issues are prevalent! I’m just being realistic when I don’t expect the SABC to broadcast the film. It surprised me that the VPRO broadcast it. It is after all a very hurtful film.

It is extremely sexist.

Kerkhof: It’s about sexism. About racism. The film isn’t sexist or racist. It’s ABOUT sexism and racism and hatred!

Not to mention violence.

Kerkhof: Yes. Some people find it hysterical and exagerrated. But that depends on how you look at things. What I did was compress many forms of violence together in sixty minutes. I could have chosen to make a film in which only one violent scene appears, only one violent event which changes the life of the lead character. This would have been a more classical dramatic form. But then I would have had to define the nature of the violence, whether it be political or criminal or somewhere inbetween. But what I wanted to do was show that all these forms of violence entermesh with each other, inform each other and eventually become indistinguishable from each other. Because in South Africa when a father rapes his daughter that is an act with political implications, it is a deed which is politically nourished by a sexist and patriarchal culture. That act of incestuous rape is in a sense legitimised by the political climate of violence and patriarchy. It is these links that my film attempts to expose and explore. The hidden connections between political base and violent superstructure.

Fitzpatrick: What fascinated me is the way that people deal with violence in their everyday lives. It seems to apathize them, to work like a drug. People don’t react to violence anymore.

Kerkhof: But at the same time there is a fascination for violence. I noticed that in myself in the short time that I was there. One evening in Yeoville there was a shootout. The South African actors and I ran towards the place because we were eager to see what was happening. The sound recordist, Fokke van Saane and the producer Jeroen Beker, who had both just arrived in South Africa were comletely apalled. They were so shocked by the incident that they took a taxi home, although it was only 150 meters away. What shocked them the most was the eagerness with which we wanted to see that bleeding body on the pavement. They found it monstrous. And they were right. But that’s South Africa.

MIEKE BERNINK
PATRICK MINKS
SKRIEN AUGUST 1994