South African film

March 15 to 27, 2006

After the end of apartheid, and more specifically in the past few years, South African has started to gain an international reputation. The interest in the democratization process is also connected to a successive reappraisal of the artistic movements in this "new nation".

Thus, the Film Museum's series of 10 programmes, curated by Jyoti Mistry and Florian Schattauer, will focus not only on the current blossoming, but also on the history of filmmaking in South Africa, which is largely unknown in Europe.

These will include examples from the years 1949 to 2005, from rare classics like Jim Comes to Joburg (the first film with an all-black cast) to the current festival hit Tsotsi and the internationally acclaimed animation films of artist William Kentridge.

Instead of exoticism and pre-conceived European ideas of Africa, the series is characterized by a South African perspective: What preoccupies the imaginations of South Africans? How do they see themselves (e.g. in The Stick and Jannie Totsiens), and how do foreigners (such as Lionel Rogosin in Come Back Africa) view this country? How do the films deal with the historic contradictions and the traumas of South Africa (Mapantsula, Proteus, Zulu Love Letter) – and with the process of self-determination?