The indigenous Afrikaans film: Representation as a nationalistic endeavour

Abstract

(2012) asserted in his overview of South African films that Afrikaans films, especially in their initial phase, unabashedly and predominantly served Afrikaner nationalism. This assertion is validated by the fact that a nationalistic endeavour in any colonised literature (and culture) is almost a sine qua non as Amuta (1989) and Ashcroft (1989) have explicated in their independent discussion of post-colonial literatures. Our assumption is that this model can mutatis mutandis be applied to the evolution of the Afrikaans film. Brink (1991) employed their theory in his own description of the evolution of Afrikaans literature. This model illustrates that the emancipation of a formerly colonised literature undergoes different stages. The initial stage is that of appropriation of the themes, models and even authors of the former colonial power. The second stage is that of an aggressive nationalism followed by a stage of (initial) emancipation, 'restructuring European "realities" in post-colonial terms, not simply by reversing the hierarchical order, but by interrogating the philosophical assumptions on which the order was based' (Ashcroft 1989:33).Although Amuta, Ashctroft and Brink in their wake only discern three stages, a final stage could be that of total emancipation where the initiative no longer lies with other literatures and cultures (and even the underlying philosophical assumptions), but where the own literary tradition is scrutinised, re-evaluated and even parodied. In the process, the historical past is re-assessed and laid to rest with far-reaching philosophical, ideological and poetical implications.

Reframing South African Cinema History: Modernity, the New Africa Movementand Beyond

“…The city was argued to be contaminating the Afrikaner soul, and CCT was to assist Afrikaners reconnect with the soil (bodem). This feeling resonated with other contemporary political and aesthetic movements, especially in literature, which manifested in the enduring myth of 'the farm' (Van Coller and Van Jaarsveld 2018). Thus, artists were to be trained to draw inspiration from the bodem.…”