African film audiences have never been homogenous, and so
does documentary film consumption and actual production thereof on the
continent’ where cinema is a often gamble, and must always content with issues
of inadequate resources.
Contemporary filmmakers, taking advantages of the shifting
technologies, are furthering an ideological objective of reclaiming the means
of their colonization for a project geared at decoloniality of creative
expression through documentary film.
It is therefore essential that documentary filmmaking be
considered in the context of it evolving within a milieu of other creative
practices that are concerned with remodeling the colonial image of Africa.
Conceptually, even though documentary filmmakers recognize
the diverse ways colonialists exploited the medium of film, they too are
fashioning new way of reclaiming their image, “decolonizing the gaze” of their
western audiences to the true nature of African experiences.
Sadly, there also exists a sector of documentarians attempting
to satisfy western appetites in a time when the bulk funding for their films is
from foreign cultural patronage.
Many such filmmakers have become cultural brokers these
agencies require in their new missions of propagating their neo-colonial agenda.
This has forced many thematic transmutations ranging from
the homogenously preachy to the narcissistically voyeuristic, even when
admittedly being dished out to an audience that is craving multiplicities of
narrative perspectives.
Then, what social significance would a genre that seems to
be relegated to obscure transformations (from selfies to webcasts) made
possible by today’s ever-accelerating advances in technology inspire and
represent in relation to recording historical accounts?
When DSLR’s became a norm for portable production of
documentaries, spawning what became a cult of ‘back-pack filmmakers’, there
seemed to come a semblance of what many thinkers had dubbed the
‘democratization of the production process and the lowering of production
costs’.
But did that advent of affordability also render the
discipline susceptible to corruptibility of narrative esthetics?
Why have documentary films rather become similar to newsfeed
of near-snuff or war tragedy spectacles, than records of psychological analyses
of a global socio-psychological deviances?
Why are we witnessing more biased coverage of issues
(historical or otherwise) in a world where most of humanity’s woes are
interwoven with global power dynamics far beyond the layman’s conceptual grasp?
***
Yet, once in a while, a documentarian emerges with a voice
that is auteurist but boldly objective, a film with a sharp quality of
representation of a pivotal subject of ‘literature’s interventions in the South
African liberation struggle’.
Told through candidly personal interviews with giants of the
South African literary tradition such as Lefifi Tladi, Mtutuzeli Matshoba, Mama
Fatima Dike and Duma Ka Ndlovu to name a few, we are taken through a nostalgic
journey of rediscovering the true vein of literary and musical dissidence which
still resonates with artistic activism of today.
Meticulously weaving archival footage and narration that
does not purport to be a prosaic academic essay, the story is of a generation and
its hope for the future, framed into superb images by cinematographer Lebo
Moabi, weaved together by editor Andrew Wessels.
Summoning newborns and the unborn towards a revision of
art’s influence on the revolutionary voice of 1970’s South Africa, UpRize
becomes a means of constructing a new historical knowledge based on researched
archives, filmed memories providing critical scrutiny of social dissidence.
UpRize is a documentary intent on valorizing memory, with an
approach that intends to remember the forgotten and neglected themes of a
period in South African history.
The activist nature of the documentary also allows for the
interrogation of memory from a standpoint of those who are recalling that which
they had witnessed and within which they had participated.
In the case of the style of production, the film relies
extensively on archive material in their editing, and thus reinforces even
further the connection with historic thought that is related to the interests
of our present interpretation and representation of the past.
What differentiates the documentary from others is that it delves
into a literary revolution of the late 60’s up until the stringent 80’s in a
methodical way that is not pinned down by concepts of analysis of that past
reality in comparison to the present, but rather how it shows explicitly the
connections between the two realities.
A certain musicality ensues throughout its narrative style,
achieved through a sublime selection of antique musical recordings, with a pace
of cuts exhuming a rhythm that gives the documentary a beat that call one to
stand up to memory’s daring.
The voiceover is principally responsible for maintaining a
narrative coherence, making the film resemble ‘a read document’, further
compounded by archive footage that is also not divorced from its original audio
which makes the imagery and montages composed of them more captive.
These montages accompanying his narration to reinforce the
voice-over discourse dealing with two concomitant social phenomena at play: a
historic one of repression by apartheid and a tradition of resistance on the
part of the creative people.
I wonder if the documentary was made by a veteran filmmaker
from the era being interrogated, would have had the same filmic sensibility of
an inquisitive mind as seen in Sifiso Khanyile’s UpRize?
Seeking to integrate the archive material collated as
‘proof’, the production produces cohesive arguments that run throughout the
film.
Reinforcing an astute point of view and keen logic developed
by the director in regards to the subject of art and revolution, UpRize is a
daring attempt at communicating a timeless message through time unbeknown.
It is a 'Film-dossier', a document of how the filmmaker and
his interviewees can remount time, creating a new version of the recent past.
And similar to historians, this ensemble of storytellers, by
going through their own personal archives, they chart an exemplary way of truly
keeping memory alive.
The film, over and above being an inaugural project, it is
proving Sifiso Khanyile a formidable historian and film artist, a filmmaker capable
of recomposing multi-layered webs of stories through which the fabric of time
is woven; to a place where history can always be reinvented, gaining new
meanings when told through a new voice.
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