kagablog

It was a warm day in Toronto when I sat in a packed theatre to watch Ramadan Suleman’s second film Zulu Love Letter. In the audience were various members of the South African industry and next to me a prominent actor. Ramadan introduced his film very well “I am going to take you on a journey to South Africa, when we return we will talk”. Great, I thought, short and sweet.

The film began. The actor, after about ten minutes, started whispering to me about how bad he thought it was. I asked him to please shut up so I could watch the film. It did irritate me that he had already started making his judgements based on ten minutes. And throughout the film I have to report he shifted and turned, sucked in his breath, hissed and kept whispering in my ear. On one level I found him funny because I didn’t know what film he was watching. The film he was watching must have been painful because the movie I was watching, the love letter I was receiving I was enjoying.

It was refreshing to see a film about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission because most films about the Truth Commission lie. The lens is in the wrong place, focusing on the people that didn’t experience the struggle. I have always felt that the lens of the camera should be focused on the ones living with the aftermath of apartheid. In Ramadan’s Love Letter I saw images I felt had been missing from the cinematic debate of the TRC. I saw theories that I had often wondered about realised on screen.

The film travelled to Venice, picked up amongst others an award for Best Actress at FESPACO and the Special jury Prize at the Durban Film Festival. All the while I was waiting to see and hear what people back home in South Africa would say about the film.

Back home in an interview with the Sunday Times, Colin Moss in speaking about the new Darrell Roodt film that he is in says, “It’s a nice change. For so long we’ve made these art movies about politics that no one wants to see, but the first thing we have got to do to have a successful local industry is to put bums on seats and make money”.

Now Colin is entitled to his opinion and I agree with certain aspects of his statement. I am all for bums on seats. Show me a director or a producer that isn’t. His first statement however gets bandied about so much that it starts to become truth. And since we are dealing with truth in Zulu let’s examine other so-called ‘truths’ in our industry.

“There are no black writers, directors, producers, cameramen, sound men, grips etc”. One of the saddest ‘truths’ about our new democracy is the dumbing down of the nation. The idea that ‘being deep’ is a problem. I have sat at endless dinner parties, watched debates, listened to debates on SAFM about the South African film industry to last a lifetime and the one thing that always gets my goat up is when someone says “No more political films”.

Let me go out on a limb here as a director and writer in the industry. There is nothing wrong with political films; in fact I will say what others have said before me “all films are political”. The young film school kid that tells me “I don’t watch political films” I am quick to point out that that very choice is political. I am open to have a debate about whether the films are boring or not but to have them shoved under the carpet is not the answer. Because of the nature of the industry and the funding, we haven’t had an opportunity to make vast amounts of work, so what tends to be seen are the political films, but this landscape in itself is changing as I write this.

Amongst these ‘political films’ are Gums and Noses, Dollars and White Pipes, Max and Mona, Crazy Monkey, Twist, U Carmen eKhayletsha, The Flyer, Faith’s Corner, Conversations On A Sunday Afternoon, Tsotsi, Hijack Stories and others. And I haven’t even mentioned old Leon. If the knock on the political films is that they don’t make money well my feeling is if someone is giving you money for a film you should find ways of paying back the money. But don’t stop people from funding the films they want to fund. Mapantsula is a great film, politics or no politics. Other films have touched on politics with varying degrees of success both from a filmic point of view and the audience but that does not mean that there isn’t a market for them.

I find sometimes in our country certain people always want things to be clear-cut. You are either this or that. If you act on a soap opera you can’t act on a drama because the audience will get confused. If you start a new drama you have to cast unknowns because no one wants to see the same faces. As if acting is a one-stop shop department only. You hear it every time a project starts we need new black writers but nothing in plan for the ones that worked on the last project, where is the growth?

If political films don’t work we must make commercial films. As if anyone knows what that is. Hollywood, the master of commercial films doesn’t even get it right. I meet students or people who say we are tired of politics bring something else to which I say my suggestion is make films. And try to make them well. Period. Don’t subscribe or speak an opinion as if it’s truth. A good friend of mine always says ‘people forget that there is such a thing as taste’. We have different tastes and if your taste isn’t for the political watch something else. Which people don’t want to see political films, I ask Colin. I meet people on the street who are crying for films that have political content only. I think people want to see good films and films that speak of the continent. Comedy or tragedy. I agree that maybe as a film telling nation the structure of story, character, plot needs to be developed to produce polished works but to say that we were making art films on politics no one wanted to see is a lie. Film is the TRUTH. People want to see the truth.

And this brings me back to Ramadan Suleman. The man has a lot to say. He has opinions and he is clear about the message he intends bringing. Zulu Love Letter is the truth because it doesn’t compromise the ugliness and the pain of the country. If the saying change is pain means anything it reflects in Zulu. The mother that can’t communicate with her daughter who is deaf as a result of beatings she received during her pregnancy from the apartheid police. The comrades that walk the streets without purpose as played by Hugh Masebenza. The film speaks a truth. The policeman that refuses to testify before the TRC was one of my favourite scenes. It struck a chord with me because I remember reading about guys that didn’t want to testify. Yet this image might have been prevalent in documentaries but I never saw it to my satisfaction in fiction filmmaking. The subtle intimidation the black police officer uses to warn the woman of pursuing their case to the TRC. The resounding message at the end of the film that there are many dead souls wondering the land, many unreturned heroes and heroines, many families waiting for the return of their loved ones. Waiting for some sign of life. In the midst of this chaos what kind of film would represent this. The film is raw. It’s an open wound that has flies settling in because this is the reality. The pulse might still be rainbow but the nation hasn’t found the pot of gold.

The surreal elements in the movie also lend to this mood of the country. A country where people still fight transformation, a country where people are eager to forget and panic when the conversation shifts to pre 1994, a country that has to create a logo called ‘proudly South African’, a country where everyone is afraid to hurt the other, a country where dinner tales aren’t complete with one or two hijack stories and a country where the second economy reigns supreme. It’s a country in change. And change is Pain. And the beauty in my country of Zulu Love Letter is in the red dust of forgiveness it raises another point of view. A raw language, making it impossible to ignore no matter what they say.