Out-of-placeness and the city as a space of relation in apartheid-era cinema

Bibliographic Data

ID3606234
AuthorsDerilene Marco (0000-0002-2268-8235, University of the Witwatersrand, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume47
Issue1
Pages69-82
Publication date2021-01-02
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Dynamics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0253-3952 • E-ISSN: 1940-7874
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/02533952.2021.1916880
OpenAlexW3165152684
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited21

This article considers the ways in which characters are presented as “out of place” in different apartheid city spaces in anti-apartheid era films of the late 1980s: A Dry White Season (1989, dir. Euzhan Palcy) and Mapantsula (1988, dir. Oliver Schmitz) and, to a lesser degree, Cry Freedom (1987, dir. Richard Attenborough). The article explores the manner in which the protagonists relate to each other through interracial friendship, relationality and mobility in the domestic spaces of cities and townships. It reads these relations as occupying and redefining apartheid sensibilities in distinct ways that filter into how postapartheid sensibilities are and can be navigated. The paper thus grapples with how seemingly fixed apartheid spaces and characters in the films can also be part of complex, real-life repositionings of racial identities in postapartheid South Africa that are not always clear and/or neat. The paper therefore argues that through their representations of the past, these films perform memory work and map our memories and historical constructions of apartheid

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Friendship · Linguistics · Movie theater · Social science · Sociology · African history and culture studies · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Gender Studies · History · Philosophy · South African History and Culture

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