kagablog

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

From the 24th to the 28th April 1994 Ian Kerkhof shot a feature film for the VPRO in Johannesburg, South Africa, during the elections. The film was to be broadcast on June 1 as part of the programme Lolamoviola, leaving very little time for editing. Reason enough for Kerkhof to demand his own editor: J.P. (yaypay) Luijsterburg of Phantavision in Amsterdam, who edited the film on the D3 system. AV Magazine spoke to both of them about the (post) production of the film…

CONFESSIONS OF A YEOVILLE RAPIST (Nice To Meet You, Please Don’t Rape Me!) is the title of the film that Ian Kerkhof shot in South Africa during the country’s first free elections held in April 1994. The “Yeoville” of the title is a suburb of Johannesburg. Kerkhof hails from South Africa (he’s lived in the Netherlands for eleven years) and wrote a treatment for the film with Peter Morris. This backbone was fleshed out with contributions from the three South African actors.

CONFESSIONS OF A YEOVILLE RAPIST is a VPRO television production (it was broadcast on wednesday, June 1), but a longer cinema version will also be released with the title Nice To Meet You, Please Don’t Rape Me! A subsidy application has been made to the Film Fund in order to finance a 35mm print.

Ian Kerkhof about the content of the film: “The film is an analysis of South African society using the metaphor of rape. The film perceives South Africa as a rape culture, wherein the relationships between men and women have been so perverted by a history of colonialism, apartheid and violence that people cannot engage in normal social intercourse. The film is about three men, an un-holy trinity, but they are not real characters, not real individuals. They function to present the audience with archetypes and concepts. The narrative developments lead to the men raping each other, but not just sexually, they also do so verbally. The possibility of friendship between themselves is polluted by their violent backgrounds.

The actors were prepared to enrich the film with a lot of personal experience. That’s clear from the acting level but also a great deal of the script information came from them: an Afrikaner, a black man and a white English speaker - they represent different aspects of South African society. Under apartheid all the inhabitants of South Africa learned to live with hate; now that there has been a democratic election does not automatically mean that all that hate will just evaporate.

I am apalled at how superficially the media treats South Africa: as if the election day ended an entire history. But hate is still brewing in people’s hearts, even if it isn’t legitimised by the state any more. That is what I wanted to show in the film. I compare this film to a huge ripe boil; it is full of pus, but only once that boil has been burst and the pus has seen the light of day can one even think of the healing beginning. This was the process that the actors went through. After a few days the trust was established and then in the free space of the rehearsal room anything was possible. A lot of really terrible stuff came up. Racial hatred has been deeply impregnated in black and white South Africans, regardless of education levels and financial privilege. The space that the actors received in order to express that hatred was very satisfying for them.

I get letters from all three actors who are still to an extent dealing with the after effects of the openness with which they dealt with each other during the shooting. I think you can see that clearly in the final scene of the film in which the men are literally chained to each other: despite all the terrible stuff they have done to each other they still have to face the future together. It is a simple metaphor but I wanted it to be clear and I hope that South Africans get the opportunity to see the film. People have found the film extremely pessimistic…but for me it is about the insight that these people are bound together because of the apalling history that they share. So I see it as a hopeful film. Not a pleasant, but definitely an honest film.”

LEO KOOMEN
AV MAGAZINE
JUNE 1994