Beyond Black and White. Hollywood Loves Apartheid's Tales. but South

inside PJ Harvey makes an album that’s her all-too-underrated career in miniature josh tyrangiel on music ArtsMOVIES MUSIC BOOKS EXHIBITIONS FASHION ARCHITECTURE Thumbs up Films like Triomf, about life in a poor white suburb, explore themes besides reconciliation MOVIES Beyond Black and White. Hollywood loves apartheid’s tales. But South Africans want to tell the nation’s stories themselves you cast? Arnold Vosloo as Reagan and South African actors Vosloo (The Mummy) BY ALEX PERRY/CAPE TOWN Presley Chweneyagae as U.S. hockey team and Chweneyagae (the Oscar-winning Tsot- take one of the greatest moments captain Mike Eruzione, right? No? si) wouldn’t either. It’s just a little strange in modern American sports history, the Now you know how many South Afri- that South Africa’s most important stories “Miracle on Ice,” when the U.S. ice-hockey cans feel about the arrival in Cape Town are so often told by foreigners. “Imagine team unexpectedly defeated the Soviet of Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon to how the Americans would feel if we cast Union at the 1980 Olympics. Add in an shoot a Clint Eastwood movie about South a South African as Martin Luther King,” avuncular presidential candidate—Ron- Africa’s 1995 Rugby World Cup victory over says Johannesburg-based producer and ald Reagan—who would come to tap the the New Zealand All Blacks. It’s not that film financier Paul Raleigh. “It’s like the victory’s almost mythical national signifi- Freeman (playing President Nelson Man- old Westerns, when the Indian chiefs were cance to sell the idea of a new American dela) or Damon (who stars as Springbok white guys in make-up. It’s just wrong.” ALEXIS FLYNN dawn. Turn it all into a movie. Who would captain Francois Pienaar) will do a bad job. Raleigh is part of a new generation of time April 20, 2009 00 South African filmmakers determined to Color Visions. fice. Many of the U.S. films of the past few take back the country’s stories and invest years have struggled to get a release. Those them with a spirit that goes deeper than Filmmakers tackle that have, flopped. Why? “Audiences like skin. He produced 2005’s Tsotsi, a film apartheid—with authenticity—something that’s real and about a township hoodlum who steals a mixed results from the heart,” says producer Raleigh. car—and the rich black couple’s baby in its The truth is that no country is ever as back seat—which shattered once and for simple as black and white, let alone one all the naive but, among outsiders, popular with South Africa’s unrivalled ethnic mix notion that all South Africa’s stories can and bloody history. When Tsotsi won its be framed in terms of black and white. An- best foreign film Oscar in 2006, the cast other is director Michael Raeburn, who has and crew went to Mandela’s house for a just released Triomf, a bleak examination of celebration. “After he congratulated us, a poor Johannesburg family—who happen he told us: ‘We should be very careful of to be white. “There’s suddenly a sense in our South African stories,’ ” says Kenneth South Africa that we don’t have to make Nkosi, who played Tsotsi’s friend Aap. films only about truth and reconciliation,” “ ‘Do not tell our stories in the wrong way. says Raeburn. “We can make romantic Mapantsula Telling it like it was Remember that there is no one in the comedies, gay movies, horror movies— world who is not flawed.’ He was saying: ‘I anything we like. There’s a real energy out Hits am a man. I am not this perfect icon Hol- there. It’s a real creative moment.” Cry Freedom 1987 lywood makes me out to be. That’s not the At the end of apartheid, South Africa A white journalist risks everything to dig truth.’ And a movie that doesn’t ring true had no film industry to speak of. Film- into the death of black activist Steve Biko is a movie that’s no good.” makers had either been co-opted by the Mapantsula 1988 South Africa’s filmmakers are taking white regime for propaganda or driven un- The story of a petty criminal’s political that advice to heart. They still crew and derground. Foreign filmmakers—whose awakening paints a vivid, honest picture act for Hollywood, but the country now of township life under apartheid big budgets can help prop up smaller lo- churns out a steady roll of its own excel- cal industries—had stayed away. With Cry, The Beloved Country 1995 lent small films. The year beforeTsotsi won Two fathers, one black and one white, are apartheid gone and sanctions lifted, that united through the loss of their sons its Oscar, South Africa missed out on one changed. Television commercial produc- for Yesterday, the story of an HIV-infected ers from around the globe discovered mother bringing up her daughter in dirt- that Cape Town combined a spectacu- poor KwaZulu Natal. In 2007 came Bunny lar location with skilled, cheap crews. Chow, a hip black-and-white comedy about Movie makers found that South Africa’s three comedians traveling to a festival that diverse landscape—savannah to desert, recalled early Spike Lee. Last year featured winelands to white-sand beaches—could Jerusalema, a sophisticated thriller about stand in for almost anywhere, while the the rise and fall of a Johannesburg slum- people of the Rainbow Nation, with a care- lord—a kind of South African American fully placed sombrero here or a hijab there, Gangster—which made its star, Rapulana could be almost anyone. Hollywood de- In My Country Romance apartheid-style Seiphemo, the new face of South African scended. In the last few years, South Africa cinema. Later this year Seiphemo teams has doubled as 16th century England, Iraq, Misses up with Tsotsi’s Nkosi in White Wedding, a Mexico, the earth in 10,000 B.C. and outer Pure Blood 2000 road movie that, with impressive maturity, space—as well as other parts of Africa. As Surrealism, vampirism, incest—and an plays apartheid’s legacy of racial division FROM TOP: D a result, Cape Town now finds itself home undercurrent of anti-white-rule sentiment for laughs. to a thriving film industry that employs In My Country 2004 With South Africa taking ownership A 25,000 people and contributes some $800 A black journalist and a white poet fall in of its stories, the country’s best talent is V I love as they listen to accounts of torment D H million a year to South Africa’s economy, sticking around to help with the telling. ANNAY according to Laurence Mitchell of the Cape at the Truth and Reconciliation hearings In the past, successful stars or filmmakers Film Commission. Goodbye Bafana 2007 like Vosloo or Tsotsi director Gavin Hood PRO If Hollywood found a great backdrop for The true story of Mandela’s friendship with would have left for Los Angeles. Charlize DUC its movies, it also fell in love with South his white prison guard goes dull on screen Theron, South Africa’s biggest star, never TIONS Africa’s stories. The end of apartheid nar- even acted at home. But Nkosi, who was /KOBA L rative in particular—an epic of racist re- Tim Robbins in 2006 and Goodbye Bafana cast in Peter Jackson’s upcoming alien C pression that climaxes in a transcendent (the friendship between Mandela and his blockbuster District 9, shot in Soweto last OLLE C moment of redemption under an iconic white prison guard) with Joseph Fiennes year, says that while he’s happy to act for TION, leader—is a movie script made real. And in 2007. This year brings Endgame, a thriller Hollywood, he has no wish to act in it. A Hollywood has shot that script over and about the secret talks to end apartheid star- South Africa is too exciting. “We were shut LLSTAR COLLE over again. In 2004, Samuel L. Jackson and ring William Hurt and Jonny Lee Miller. In away from the world and each other for so Juliette Binoche made In My Country about February, as Ving Rhames was wrapping long. But now we are getting to know each C the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Master Harold . .and the Boys—a film about other. Now we are telling our own stories,” TION/ hearings in the mid- to late ’90s, and Hilary the relationship between a white boy and he says. “This is not just about making P H Swank starred as an attorney representing his black servant—Damon and Freeman movies. This is about our changing po- OENIX a black South African political activist seek- arrived for their rugby turn. litical landscape, our democracy, the fact PI C T U ing amnesty in Red Dust. Then came Catch But Hollywood’s obsession with South that anyone can say anything now. This is RES a Fire (terrorism during apartheid) with Africa hasn’t carried over into the box of- about shaping a nation.” n .

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