South Africa at AFA: Katrina

Consider it the South African equivalent of Night of the Quarter Moon, the camp classic which featured a supposedly bi-racial Julie London passing for white. Of course, skin pigment was always of paramount importance in Apartheid-era South Africa, with the mixed race population (so-called “coloureds”) having somewhat different legal status than blacks and whites. Separate not being equal, many tried to pass for white, like the title character of Jans Rautenbach’s Katrina, which screens during the United We Stand: South African Cinema during Apartheid retrospective currently underway at the Anthology Film Archives.

Catherine Winters’ son will soon return from medical school in London. She would like to see him go back, for reasons she has difficulty explaining. The recently reassigned Anglican Father Alec Trevellan assiduously courts her, but again she is at a loss for words when he proposes. The truth is pretty simple, but definitely heavy. She is actually Katrina September, a bi-racial woman from a hardscrabble provincial village. Only one man knows the truth, her brother Adam September, a mercurial advocate of self-sufficiency and empowerment for his people, who holds little love for the anti-Apartheid revolutionaries.

Despite the hot-buttons racial issues, the film seems to share frère September’s disinterest in politics. Aside from his testy exchange with a Tutu like activist, the subject of Apartheid is never broached. Yet the hyper-racial environment is inescapable. Indeed, it is what drives Katrina’s drama.

Like Julie London, the Ali MacGraw-looking Jill Kirkland was also a singer, who scored a medium-sized hit with Katrina’s theme song. Not only does she look right in the part, she projects the perfect brittle vulnerability. Joe Stewardson also handles Trevellan’s angst-binges relatively convincingly, but it is Don Leonard who supplies the film’s heart as Kimberly Jacobs, a sort of unofficial “community organizer” from Winters/September’s former village. While he initially appears somewhat buffoonish, the slow revelation of his character’s depth and pain really gives the film its poignancy.

Released in 1969, Katrina has that garish 1970’s-era color that (so appropriately in this case) plays havoc with skin tones. Indeed, Leonards’ Jacobs looks whiter than this year’s Academy Awards. Yet, that underscores the arbitrary nature of such concerns.

Essentially, Katrina is an unrepentant melodrama with a social issue angle to give it added snob appeal. Though necessarily tragic, it is arguably the most entertaining film of the United We Stand retrospective, in an old-fashioned popcorn kind of way. A tricky film to pigeon-hole but definitely well worth seeing, Katrina screens this Saturday (4/9) and Wednesday (4/13) at Anthology Film Archives.

South Africa at AFA: Mapantsula

“Panic” is hardly a revolutionary role model. He is a thief and a professional snitch, but finds himself radicalized in spite of himself in Oliver Schmitz’s Mapantsula (trailer here), which was duly banned under Apartheid, making it a fitting selection for the United We Stand: South African Cinema during Apartheid retrospective currently underway at the Anthology Film Archives.

Mapantsula had two screenplays: the shooting script co-written by Schmitz (a native white South African) and lead actor Thomas Mogotlane and the dummy version shown to the state censors. They were both stories about a small time gangster (or mapantsula), but there the similarities end. The formerly footloose Panic has been rounded-up with group of politicals. As usual, he is expected to rat out his cellmates, but this time events do not follow their regular course. In Schmitz’s split time frame, the audience also witnesses the not particularly edifying events that led Panic to that holding cell.

Frankly, the Panic of a few days prior to his arrest exhibits nearly sociopathic traits. He is cool enough to rob a white business man at knife point and then brazenly count his take in front of the man. It is never political though. Rather, it is simply an act of unrepentant self-interest. Indeed, he regularly sells out his colleagues and shamelessly sponges off his miserable girlfriend Pat. When his spiteful behavior even gets her fired from her domestic employment, it hardly registers with the hustler. However, Schmitz and Mogotlane clearly suggest Panic’s hardboiled everyman-for-himself attitude is ultimately untenable for black South African living under Apartheid.

Arguably, Mogotlane succeeds too well creating a portrait of a remorseless street tough, making it difficult to feel much during his later ordeals. It almost seems like a case of karma being what it is. Still, there is no denying the intensity of his performance. It really represents rather brave work, both in terms of the guerilla style of the production shoot and the unsympathetic nature of his on-screen character.

After extensive television work in Germany, Schmitz returned to feature filmmaking with Life, Above All, which was shortlisted for this year’s best foreign language Oscar. Still, his international reputation largely rests on Mapantsula, which is probably best appreciated within the context of a retrospective like United We Stand. Mogotlane vividly brings Panic to life as a flesh-and-blood individual (albeit a decidedly problematic one) and the funky soundtrack by the Ouens adds a considerable spark. However, certain sequences do not hold together well, particularly during Panic’s interrogations. As a grim depiction of humanity, Mapantsula is certainly representative of dissident South African cinema of the Apartheid era. It screens today (4/7) and Sunday (4/10) as the United retrospective begins at the Anthology Film Archives.

South Africa at AFA: Saturday Night at the Palace

The owner of the Palace roadhouse is a crusty old codger, but maybe a decent sort at heart. Ordinarily, September is quite happy slinging burgers for him there, but not tonight. It has nothing to do with his boss though, but where they live: South Africa. Based on co-star Paul Slabolepszy’s stage play, director-cinematographer Robert Davies’ Saturday Night at the Palace screens this Thursday when the United We Stand: South African Cinema during Apartheid retrospective kicks off at Anthology Film Archives.

September is as straight as they come, which his boss respects. He trusts the hardworking father of seven to close his burger joint. He even gives him paid vacation and a bonus for his yearly visit home. Unfortunately, September will have no back-up to deal with Vince and Forsie, two drunken white trash losers, nursing their very different resentments.

The nakedly racist Vince is particularly bad news. Recently cut by his semi-pro football team, Vince specializes in wearing out his welcome. His socially awkward friend Forsie is supposed to tell his brutish pal he has been expelled from their crash pad, but he has trouble finding the words. Stopping at the Palace after closing, Forsie tries to have it out with the hulking Aryan, but Vince is more interested in hassling the profoundly vulnerable September.

While Palace spends about fifteen minutes on exposition that was probably quickly dispensed with on stage, it quickly hits its stride once it brings the three leads come together in that isolated location. Though there is nary anything explicitly political about the story or dialogue, we understand it only works as a thriller because of the perversities of South Africa’s legal system at the time. The simple truth is September never has the option of calling the cops on his unwelcome customers, because the law would never side with him on principle. The dubious state of his work permits only increases the precariousness of his position.

Equal parts thriller and tragedy, Palace is marked by an unremitting naturalism. Still, it is possible to read an allegorical level into the film. Vince easily represents the hardcore Apartheid Nationalists, but Forsie could be seen as a stand-in for the white liberals too timid to stand up for what they knew was right.

Clint Howard lookalike Bill Flynn and the very blond Slabolepszy are quite convincing as Forsie and Vince, respectively. Between the two of them, convey everything ugly that is distinctly human. However, the film is probably most notable for the work of the celebrated South African actor John Kani, who brings genuine dignity and intensity to a somewhat one-dimensional victim role.

Given its credentials, it is strange Palace is not more frequently featured in repertory screenings. It is certainly on the right side of history, but it also works quite well just as cinema. It is a solid choice to launch the United series this Thursday (4/7) at AFA.

South Africa at AFA: The Burning

To its considerable credit, South Africa averted a bloody revolution with institutionalized score-settling. For his cinematic directorial debut, Stephen Frears adapted a Roland Starke short story subtly speculating about the sort of violent conflict that might have been. However, it initially just seems like any other day to one privileged white youngster and his guardian granny in Frears’ The Burning, which screens during the United We Stand: South African Cinema during Apartheid retrospective at Anthology Film Archives.

The little boy is probably not a bad sort, but his grandmother is not particularly “mothering” and the black domestic servants can hardly discipline him. Like every other Thursday, the old woman intends to visit his aunt, as per usual. However, the newspaper never arrived that morning and the radio stations have gone silent. Of course, the regal old woman is hardly interested in news of the outside world anyway, but when they find his Aunt’s home deserted and ransacked, even the boy starts to suspect something might be amiss.

Indeed, the boy learns quite a lesson about his homeland in The Burning. Yet, the irony of the film is that it is not his immediate family who suffer the brunt of this “day of rage,” at least within the thirty minutes of the film. (As for their unwritten future, we can only speculate, grimly.) As a result, Burning stands out in the United We Stand line-up as a particularly bold selection, depicting the brutal injustice that comes with revolution, as well as the inequities of Apartheid.

As a rarely seen film by an accomplished filmmaker, Burning also holds additional appeal to cineastes beyond the scope of the United series. They will not be disappointed. Though it is small in scope, it displays the same sensitivity to character that distinguishes Frears’ later films, like Dirty Pretty Things and The Grifters. Despite the very different contexts, his adept use of the prepubescent boy as an unworldly POV character actually brings to mind Carol Reed’s classic Fallen Idol. Necessarily more than a bit of a snot, Mark Baillie is quite convincing as the little boy. Appropriately though, it is Cosmo Pieterse who really brings a human spark to his role as the unfortunate chauffeur.

For a first film, Burning is quite a mature work, implying volumes while directly showing relatively little. At times it flirts with the surreal, but ultimately this is just a function of its characters headstrong denial. Probably one of the quieter films about violence and injustice, Burning is definitely one of the highlights of AFA’s retrospective look at South African cinema of the Apartheid era. It screens with Sven Persson’s Land Apart this coming Sunday (4/10) and the following Thursday (4/14).

South Africa at AFA: Land Apart

It is not hard to see why cinematographer Sven Persson’s feature docu-hybrid ran afoul of state censors during Apartheid. Frankly, it is difficult to understand how it was produced in the first place. Simultaneously angry and eccentric, the Swedish-born South African-naturalized Persson’s Land Apart is a truly odd time capsule of South African in the 1970’s, which screens during the Anthology Film Archives’ upcoming United We Stand: South African Cinema during Apartheid retrospective.

Gary Miller is a fictional nightclub singer, who wants to set the world straight on his South African homeland after feeling stung by European criticism during a recent tour. Brian is a white liberal “researcher,” who in turn, wants to set the crooner straight. In between their politically charged verbal sparring, Brian gives Miller a vaguely Marxian history of South Africa and the development of Apartheid. An established nature filmmaker who worked with Ivan (Daktari) Tors, Persson periodically cuts away to scenes of indigenous wildlife. He also includes generous talking head interviews with political figures, both black and white, from across the political spectrum, including advocates of Apartheid, who not surprisingly come across quite poorly.

Apart was only previously released in a print completely butchered by the government censors. Considering how much they must have had to cut, it must have been more of a short subject than a feature. Perhaps they kept the explanation of the Afrikaners’ tenacious battlefield fighting techniques during the Boers Wars and a few of the unconvincing defenses of Apartheid from various government mouthpieces.

While the dramatic framing device increasingly approaches outright camp, the soundtrack has some groovy funkiness that will prick up many discerning ears. In his rarely seen director’s cut, Persson displays a subversive visual sensibility, juxtaposing scenes of jackals scavenging dead flesh with unvarnished images of township life. Clearly, Apartheid is now a settled controversy, but Apart’s Cliff Note history of South Africa will still likely be informative for many viewers. Dated to be sure, but still strangely engaging, Apart is definitely worth checking out next Sunday (4/10) and the following Thursday (4/14), while the United We Stand series begins this Friday (4/7) at AFA.