In Search of a National Cinema in South Africa

Isabel Balseiro, Ntongela Masilela, eds.. To Change Reels: Film and Film Culture in South Africa. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003. 272 pp. $39.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8143-3000-5. Reviewed by Peter Davis Published on H-SAfrica (February, 2004) Against the Odds: In Search of a National Cin‐ imbedded in all areas of flm production and dis‐ ema In South Africa tribution as South Africa. But this statement To Change Reels, edited by Isabel Balseiro and comes with the caveat that what we are talking Ntongela Masilela, looks at South African cinema about is the politics of exclusion. This was the from almost the earliest times up to the present. great paradox: that cinema, the most popular art South Africa early on developed a flm industry, form to evolve during the twentieth century, be‐ but for a number of reasons was limited in its haved in South Africa as if 75 percent of the popu‐ scope by restrictions that were partly self-im‐ lation did not exist. In no other country that as‐ posed. So South African cinema in its entirety is pired to a national cinema did this happen: Amer‐ not a large body of work, but while most of it can‐ ican, British, French, German, Indian, Japanese, not lay claim to the upper reaches of cinematic and Swedish cinemas all built on a solid domestic achievement, almost everything produced re‐ base. Even tiny Denmark did the same, and for wards study, from early epic to flms made for much of the silent period at least, was a world cin‐ miners to the ethnic pulp movies of the 1970s and ema. 1980s. Everything was made within a peculiar It is natural and ftting that the essays in To dominant social structure such that, even when Change Reels aspire to look at South African cine‐ films avoided its direct representation, they were ma from the vantage point of the hitherto most revealing of it. marginalized--this is the "change" referred to in This book looks at flm production in South the book's title. While the book thereby ignores Africa from a historical and social perspective, what constitutes South Africa's most significant which inevitably--this being South Africa--in‐ output of most of the last century--films for and volves the political. Indeed, it is hard to fnd an‐ about whites--it offers the most detailed analysis other country (including Nazi Germany and Sovi‐ of what cinema meant to the black underclass-- et Russia) where politics have been so deeply how, despite racial barriers, they managed to see H-Net Reviews films, the impact flms had on them, and how this is either practicable or desirable, not least be‐ their images were depicted in the handful of flms cause the exclusion of one group is the negation in which they did appear. of a cinema that is truly national. We know that whites dominated South I do not know of any guaranteed formula for African cinema from its inception, and we know cultivating a national cinema. In Cuba, after the that their domination did not cease with the end‐ Revolution there was an initial dynamism that ing of apartheid. A new government with more was inspirational to those of the Left even outside revolutionary tendencies could, after 1994, have Cuba, but which stagnated as the regime itself be‐ nationalized the flm industry, and laundered it came more and more culturally repressive. from top to bottom, ending up--as was the case Apartheid South Africa tried, with the aid of sub‐ with Cuba--with a state-run industry, with all its sidies that hugely favored the Afrikaans minority, strengths and weaknesses. This might have guar‐ to create a cinema of many ethnicities, and failed anteed a new national cinema, but one that would dismally. But what is clear is that in order to cre‐ have had to depend on a sustaining revolutionary ate a national cinema--I am tempted to say, in or‐ spirit that could only exist in some kind of isola‐ der to preserve a national culture--indigenous tion from much of the world. That was definitely production has to be nurtured and protected. In not the spirit of the new South Africa. brutal terms, this means that it cannot be left to a Now we are almost one decade after the end‐ free market, for it will be swamped by a generic ing of institutional apartheid, and the editors of Hollywood. I do not even have any faith in a glob‐ To Change Reels are still anticipating the rise of a alized market, where the flm may be produced in national cinema as they pose the critical ques‐ South Africa, but is fnanced from outside, in tions: whole or in part, and with mandatory foreign stars playing the roles of South Africans. This "Should a 'true South African cinema' be one leads to flms like Sarafina and Cry, the Beloved where the means of production are in the hands Country (both versions), for example, which made of the majority of South Africans--or at the very the shameful choice of excluding South Africans least, in the hands of an intellectual black elite from leading roles--a different kind of apartheid. that claims to represent the interests of that ma‐ jority more persuasively than has hitherto been So government money has to be put into in‐ the case? If the answer is yes, would it follow that digenous production, and I can see no compelling 'black flms' would then be made? And would reason why this money should not favor the hith‐ 'black flms,' by virtue of being made by blacks, ft erto excluded majority; but just as important, this the bill of being part of a South African national domestic production must have some protected cinema?" (p. 6) access to the home market. This still does not guarantee success, but it is the only way to have a (These are only part of the nexus of problems chance. The struggle for access to and control of that exist. To my mind, the more urgent issue of world markets has been part of flm distribution Hollywood's domination is well addressed in the from the earliest times and, for a variety of rea‐ book.) sons, Hollywood has emerged triumphant and In fairness, it should be noted that Masilela seems poised to stifle all other production. The and Balseiro in fact pose the question without giv‐ threat to the emergence of a national cinema-- ing any answer. They are not here describing the whatever formulation that might take--I would ar‐ output of a rainbow nation, where race is irrele‐ gue does not now come primarily from the contin‐ vant, but a transfer of the control of production uing racial and racist structure of flm production, from one racial group to another. I do not think 2 H-Net Reviews which I suspect will wither away, but from out‐ Country (first version, 1952, and the later version, side forces. South Africa is not the only nation to 1995), and Come Back, Africa (1959). Edwin Hees be faced with this dilemma--in my own country, describes in detail the political importance of the Canada, it is at least as monumental. As opposed making of De Voortrekkers as a concretization of to most other nations, however, a truly national the central myth of the Afrikaner volk, the Great South African cinema may be stillborn at the very Trek, and the claim to the land of South Africa moment when it seems a possibility, for reasons through the defeat of the Zulus at the Battle of beyond its control. Blood River. Hees compares the ideology of De In the book, different writers offer a masterly Voortrekkers with that of D. W. Griffith's notorious overview of cinema, and then television, in South Birth of a Nation, which had come out one year Africa from earliest times to the present. Ntongela earlier. Hees is not convinced that Birth of a Na‐ Masilela's look at the beginnings of flm culture in tion was a direct influence on De Voortrekkers's South Africa documents a black interest not only producer Schlesinger and director Shaw. Yet I am in watching flms, but also in using them for edu‐ still inclined to that view, since Shaw, whether he cational purposes. It is fascinating to learn that had seen the earlier flm or not (it was shown in Sol Plaatje, brilliant in all things, actually traveled both Europe and South Africa), could scarcely and lectured with a mobile projector (here, I am have been unaware of its existence, as it was no‐ reminded of James Joyce's early attempt to launch torious for causing riots in the United States. I cinema in Ireland), and that Plaatje "complement‐ think the coincidence is too great for there not to ed his pedagogical flms with others that were for have been a connection. And I also think that the entertainment" (p. 19). In fact, mobile cinema was one context missing from Hees's analysis, that of the way most Africans experienced cinema dur‐ the Great War, is also worthy of mention. After all, ing most of the last century, since their access to the flm did have to pass through a strict censor‐ theaters was strictly limited. ship, this being wartime, and the authorities must have seen some advantage in raising the martial Masilela and Bhekizizwe Peterson, in their es‐ spirits of former enemies, fourteen years after the says, record the deep resentment at the limita‐ ending of the Anglo-Boer War, in which many tions on black access to flms as articulated by in‐ members of the audience must have fought and tellectuals like H.

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