District 9 Signals a New Day for (South) African Cinema

So I wrote this piece about two months back, and since the TILTT website is under going maintanance, I decided to put it up here. And why not? :)


I always get upset when The Next Big South African Movie begins to garner local and international attention- and then it turns out to be a film about crime or hiv/aids. It’s not that I don’t think that they are good films- we’ll put it down to personal preference. The thing that gets me though, is that I begin to question whether the only thing that we can use to get the world to look at South Africa is by making the same kind of movies over and over again. Cinema audiences like to be challenged. We want to see ourselves in different genres, not just semi realistic accounts of African suffering in film form used by celebs to find a new cause to up their profiles. South African audiences want to see themselves in romance, comedy, drama and sci-fi. As a relatively new lover of sci-fi, I have always been irritated that none existed in a mainstream South African context so I’m sure you can understand how excited I was in ‘06/’07 when I discovered a short South African sci-fi on youtube. Alive in Joburg (directed by Neill Blomkamp) explored various themes of apartheid- and almost prophetically, zenophobia. I thought this was a great departure in terms of sci-fi, as most sci-fi’s seem to historically challenge issues such as racism, human rights and religion (don’t laugh but I only found out in recent months that Star Trek was a huge challenger of racism, sexism and all those bad isms. I already told you that I’m new to the genre). In this case, Alive in Joburg seemed to me like an honest introspection regarding apartheid, its role and legacy in creating today’s South African society. The documentary-style imagery and visual effects used in the film stayed with me for a long time, and also made me believe that maybe different kinds of films are on the way for South Africa, and Africa.

Fast forward to 2009: I’m doing some regular e-street stalking and I bump into talk of this extraordinary South African film that is being launched to an international audience. At this point, I’m not excited because I’m seeing flashes of Tsotsi, Yesterday and the embarrassing inaccuracies of Jerusalema in my mind’s eye. Oh no. Ah, the film is called District 9. Bleh. Being the curious soul that I am, I googled the title and was incredibly excited when I recognized the style of the film- the lightbulb went off in my head to Alive in Joburg. Produced by sci-fi nerd Peter Jackson (he produced the Lord of the Rings Trilogy), District 9 is Blomkamp’s feature film that weaves various themes and elements established in Alive in Joburg. In District 9, alien refugees (real aliens, of the extraterrestrial variety) find themselves stranded in Johannesburg. Although the alien race had first made contact with earth years before they landed on earth, they arrive not as enemies out to take over the earth (as humans always seem to be very afraid of), but rather as refugees and the last survivors of their planet. The human government is nice enough to set them up in a refugee camp (District 9) managed by a private company while the governments figured out what to do with them. The plot thickens as one of the employees of said private company develops a peculiar virus that begins to change his DNA, he is then ostracized and forced to hide in District 9- with the oppressed black population (the film is set during apartheid South Africa) and the aliens. Without saying too much about a film that I haven’t actually seen (though I am taking the lead from Alive in Joburg), it seems to me that one of the bigger themes that will be explored in the film is how we treat one another within our ‘rainbow nation’- and maybe even address the never-to-go-away question of whether aliens (if they exist) are definitely without a doubt missioning to take over our planet.

I’m not too sure what local funding – if any was used for this film (once again the argument of a lack of available local financing for local stories comes to mind), but I think it’s a good sign if international funders are also looking at different genres and refreshing stories to come out of Africa. I think it’s encouraging to the South African film industry when films that don’t fall within the AIDS/crime spectrum of the South African film sphere get international funding and more especially, attention (the District 9 trailer was released with film X-Men Origins: Wolverine). Peter Jackson is also finally fulfilling his sci-fi nerd dream of presenting his film at the sci-fi nerd convention Comic-Con this year when he promotes District 9. As a South African, it will be refreshing to see my country from a slightly different lens, even though very serious themes are being explored- and I’m sure that many other South Africans will also be very excited to look at their country from the lense of a different genre, finally. I can’t wait to watch this movie and you can be sure that I will score tickets to the premier and I hope the scripting and acting is just as good as the visual work!
P.S Another really cool thing about this movie is the Official Site- it simulates segregation much in the way that the Apartheid Museum does. I really can’t wait!