Murmures
Sollywood: the extraordinary story behind apartheid South Africa’s blaxploitation movie boom
mai 2015 | Faits de société | Cinéma/TV | Afrique du Sud
Source : The Guardian
© DR (Too aspirational … the apartheid authorities banned the thriller Joe Bullet, starring Ken Gampu, in the same week it was released.)
Français
Gavin Haynes (The Guardian)
Avant Nollywood (Nigeria), il y a eu Sollywood (Afrique du Sud), avec des films de genre qui ont pompé des recettes de films de cowboys aux drames sirupeux en passant par les thrillers façon James Bond. On lui doit le premier film en langue zoulou (sous l’apartheid aux dernières émeutes xénophobes de 2015, les rois zoulous ont souvent mené une politique de collaboration et de nuisance contre les Noirs) et même la carrière de Ken Gampu, un acteur noir, à Hollywood (USA), pourtant cette industrie cinématographique qui emprunte à la blaxploitation a été financée et soutenue par le régime raciste de Prétoria. Un patron Afrikaner du béton en a été le bras armé. Tonie van der Merwe se défend pourtant d’avoir été raciste. Aujourd’hui, il revient sur le devant de la scène, après l’extension fin des années 80 de ce courant – avec la fin de l’apartheid – relancé par le Prix Simon Sabela award (en tant que « héros et légende ») qui lui a été décerné en 2014 par le Festival de Durban (dirigé alors par Peter Machen) et la numérisation de ses films qui connaissent une deuxième vie.
Gavin Haynes (The Guardian) nous raconte cette histoire extraordinaire (en anglais).
Thierno I. Dia
Africiné / Africultures
Gavin Haynes (The Guardian) nous raconte cette histoire extraordinaire (en anglais).
Thierno I. Dia
Africiné / Africultures
English
It pumped out hugely successful cowboy films, heist dramas and Bond-style thrillers. It launched a Hollywood career and made the world’s first Zulu-language film. So does it matter that the explosion of black cinema in apartheid South Africa was funded by Pretoria – and led by an Afrikaner construction boss?
Last year, Tonie van der Merwe clutched that most Afrikaans of drinks, a double-brandy and Coke, as he accepted his Simon Sabela award as one of four « heroes and legends » at the Durban international film festival. « Without being racist, I thought a white guy won’t easily win a prize, but I was wrong, » he said from the stage, in his tux and big owlish spectacles.
Certainly, few white guys in the new South Africa receive awards for films they made under an apartheid subsidy scheme to create films for black audiences. Yet here he was – 20 years after apartheid – his massive yet ambiguous role in South African film finally being acknowledged.
To many, the « B-scheme » movies he’d made – escapist fantasies, boys’ own adventures, morality plays – were the film equivalent of apartheid’s watered-down « native beer », sold in government beer halls; a cynical National party-sponsored diversion designed to encourage the native population to stay on the reserves. At the end of one such movie, its star, Popo Gumede, turns to the camera to say: « All this violence could have been avoided if we just sat down and talked about it. » Others point to how seminal Van der Merwe was in setting up any kind of black film industry at all; to how seeing so many black faces on screen inspired a generation.
READ MORE http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/apr/14/apartheid-south-africa-black-cinema-blaxploitation-b-scheme-subsidy
Last year, Tonie van der Merwe clutched that most Afrikaans of drinks, a double-brandy and Coke, as he accepted his Simon Sabela award as one of four « heroes and legends » at the Durban international film festival. « Without being racist, I thought a white guy won’t easily win a prize, but I was wrong, » he said from the stage, in his tux and big owlish spectacles.
Certainly, few white guys in the new South Africa receive awards for films they made under an apartheid subsidy scheme to create films for black audiences. Yet here he was – 20 years after apartheid – his massive yet ambiguous role in South African film finally being acknowledged.
To many, the « B-scheme » movies he’d made – escapist fantasies, boys’ own adventures, morality plays – were the film equivalent of apartheid’s watered-down « native beer », sold in government beer halls; a cynical National party-sponsored diversion designed to encourage the native population to stay on the reserves. At the end of one such movie, its star, Popo Gumede, turns to the camera to say: « All this violence could have been avoided if we just sat down and talked about it. » Others point to how seminal Van der Merwe was in setting up any kind of black film industry at all; to how seeing so many black faces on screen inspired a generation.
READ MORE http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/apr/14/apartheid-south-africa-black-cinema-blaxploitation-b-scheme-subsidy
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