Tiré d’un récit fascinant écrit par D. Warner, Try for White, le film fut une exposition choquante des horreurs de l’apartheid et du système de classification raciale. La protagoniste du film est une métisse, Katrina, qui essaie de se faire passer pour blanche. Elle renie en effet son père et sa mère pour que son fils et elle puissent avoir une vie meilleure dans l’apartheid sud-africain. Un prêtre anglican tombe amoureux de Katerina mais leurs vies seront bouleversées lorsque les secrets seront dévoilés.

Un des films les plus novateurs réalisés durant l’apartheid des années soixante.

Réalisation: Jans Rautenbach
Scénario: Jans Rautenbach, Emil Nofal
Image: Vincent Cox
Montage: Peter Henkel
Son : Peter Usmar
Musique : Roy Martin

Interprètes: Cobus Rossouw, Katinka Heyns, Jill Kirkland, Don Leonard, Joe Stewardson, Simon Sabela.

Format: 35 mm
Durée: 90 min.
Version Originale: Anglais, Afrikaans.
Production: Emil Nofal

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A controversial examination of love across the color line, as a woman classified as mixed-race poses as white to continue her love affair with a white priest. The results of her deception bring tragedy to herself and her son. Rautenbach, as near to an auteur as was possible under the circumstances, has been criticized for an ending which seemed to support the existence of predestined racial groupings. But the film is far more complex than that, and the heartbreaking reality of the pain inflicted by apartheid is palpably presented. Filmed on location amongst the mixed-race fishing community on South Africa’s West Coast, the filmmaker took a brave step in the accepted practice of the time by mixing cast members classified as white with cast members classified as’colored’, although all the major black roles were still played by white actors.

KATRINA
by Jans Rautenbach
1969, 97 minutes, 35 mm

Director: Jans Rautenbach
Cast: Jill Kirkland, Joe Stewardson, Cobus Rossouw

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FESTIVALS

✮ 2011 – Anthology Film Archives (New York) – April 2011
* This screening is part of: UNITED WE STAND: SOUTH AFRICAN CINEMA DURING APARTHEID