Once again, the deities of technology look on me with contempt; clearly my sacrifices have been insufficient. Apparently people are having troubles reading my blog post. However, others can access it easily. My technological prowess is severely lacking, so please forgive me. I am posting the same blog post again in the hope that ALL of the lovely SAWIP browsers can access it. It's bad enough that all South Africans don't have equal access to technology - I will not let my blog post summarily dictate who can access it. So this has been posted before; hopefully it will not be posted again!

As the SAWIP team will probably come to know, I am a great lover of film. For me, the most wonderful escape and artistic indulgence is going to the cinema. A good film (and sometimes even a bad one) provides a parallel setting into which you are transported. It can provide an exercise in analysis and understanding, often allowing you to ‘experience’ a place, an individual, people, social norms, and realities that would ordinarily be inaccessible. Film is art; it is reality while being a fictional representation. Some of you probably think I’m a crazy art-lover; others know exactly what I’m talking about. The purpose of this post, however, is not to explain my borderline-obsessive love of film; rather, I wanted to share with the SAWIP audience a film I think will be of interest to all of you.

A few nights ago, I went to see Otelo Burning. This is a South African film released recently, set in Lamontville – a township in Durban – in 1989. Directed by Sarah Blecher, it follows the story of a teenage boy, named Otelo, and is narrated by his friend of a similar age and background. Otelo is taught to surf by one of his contemporaries, giving him a sense of freedom that he has clearly never before experienced.

Anyone familiar with South African history will know that the late ‘80s and early ‘90s were a tumultuous political time, particularly in the Natal province, in which violence between Inkatha and ANC supporters was prevalent and lethal. Set in this time, the burden upon the film is to adequately portray the violence of the time, without it necessarily being the focal point of the film. Blecher does this masterfully, giving a sense of the history without the film being exclusively historical.

The film incorporates three main narratives. Told over a buzzing radio in the film, often in the background, is what has come to be understood as the political grand narrative of the time – private negotiations, the pending release of Mandela, de Klerk’s opening of Parliament speech in 1990. The second narrative is that of historical reality, which is often used to oppose the grandiose political narrative of a peaceful transition of power. The violence of the period is evident and, to the best of my knowledge, relatively accurately portrayed. The focal point of the film, however, is the third narrative – a portrayal of Otelo’s life. The narrative of his life intersects with the historical narrative in significant ways – his community is a site of so-called ‘black-on-black’ violence, as a radio-presenter notes in the film. However, the grand political narrative that is presented across our history books is challenged, in many ways, by Otelo’s story. The day on which Mandela is released, Otelo faces a particularly important decision that does not in any way relate to politics but fundamentally impacts his life. The film illustrates that while we may wish to believe in the grand narrative – and I am not arguing that many of these narratives are fundamentally untrue – the stories that ‘ordinary people’ have to tell so frequent run counter to this narrative. Their stories are no less important.

The film was work-shopped by the cast and incorporates many of their own stories. For the literature fans, the subtle basis of the subplot in Shakespeare’s Othello is an enthralling analytical task. The cinematography – an area in which so many South African films fall short – was utterly refreshing. The use of polaroid photographs was, for me, particularly interesting. Finally, a thought-provoking feature of the film was the fact that it was in isiZulu with English subtitles. So many of the stories that need to be told in our country are hindered by language barriers. Those with a more adept understanding of isiZulu may disagree, but I think the language barrier was transcended in this film.

I would strongly recommend you all watch this historically rich, wonderful South African film. All the details and the trailer are on the website: http://www.oteloburning.com/

I hope that you all now have a slightly better understanding of my love of film. I’m sure there will be more film reviews to follow. There are questions that have taken residence in my brain ever since I watched Otelo Burning that I’d like you to consider if you see the film (or even if you don’t – which would be silly, because it’s excellent). To me, Otelo Burning encapsulates a contradiction. It is a foreign language film in the sense that mainstream South African cinema is in English, and this film is not; it is also foreign in that this story is so foreign to so many South Africans. Yet, isiZulu is a language spoken as a mother-tongue by a plurality of South Africans – how and why is this then a foreign phenomenon to South African cinema? Otelo’s story – or at least the backdrop of his story – is so common to so many South Africans, and yet so foreign to others. How can these completely disparate life experiences be reconciled? Can they? Do they need to be?