Mapantsula

Rip It Up, Issue 145, 1 August 1989, Page 34

Mapantsula

David Hannay’s Africa

David Hannay’s interest in Africa goes back to the final years of World War 2, whenhe wasa child staying with his farmer uncle in Hawkes Bay. The uncle had been conscripted in the Boer War at the turn of the century and was still bitter about the way in which the British had used him to fight against the Afrikaaners, who were farmers much the same as he was. By the early 60s Hannay, now Australian based, was promoting and touring African theatrical companies and, by the 70s, he was producing movies such as the kung-fu spoof The Man From Hong Kong and the New Zealand film Solo. Most recently he was producer for Mapantsula, one of the outstanding films of the recent Film Festival, and soon to run for a season at the Bridgeway in Northcote. He was in Auckland to enthuse press and the general populace — spieling to the Civic audience before a screening of Mapantsula, and even doing a stint on Rob Muldoon’s afternoon talk show. Seated in the foyer of downtown’s Park Royal, he told me how itall. - started three years ago at the Cannes Festival, “the bestindependent market place in the world.” Max Montocchio was trying to drum up interestin ashort video made by Oliver Schmitz and Thomas Mogotlane called The Grabber, whichwas in effectapilotforthe later Mapantsula. Fate, in the form of the struggling Canadian film-maker, brough Montocchio and Hannay together: “The video blew me away and I thought if it’s got that impact on video, what's it going to be like ona big sheet?!” ~ . The new film was a tricky project from the start. Hannay chuckled as he pointed out how Hector Babenco’s movie Pejote was filmed under the guise of beinga pornographic movie, and the South African authorities were shown the script of Mapantsulaand told itwas a gangster musical: “The script wasa narrative but it omitted the political bits. I explained how it was going to have this fantastic township music. Everybody loves township music. You can go into the home of a guy from the AWB, a para-military, neo-Nazi organisation, and he’s probably listening to township music while he’s putting on his uniform. And so we had an infrastructure of professional film-making — I mean, Howling 4was being shot in the next studio!” : ; The actual shooting itself went with few hitches, but the cutting room was raided by the Security police after the film had been shot: “We had been finked on by some video technician in the transfer suite where we transferred the film for the purposes of spotting the music cues. The authorities thought we had breached the Emergency media regulations, which prohibits you from using any news media footage. But we made certain all the way down the line that we didn’t use a second of news footage — there’s not an untruthful frame in : Mapantsula, but there’s not a “real” frame either.” : Hannay sees Mapantsula as being in the tradition of the hard-hitting B-movie, a fact that is reflected in

Rod Stewarts’s gritty confrontational cinematography. “All the best political films have been B-movies, going back to the black and white movies of the 1930 s which represent brilliantly for us today how people felt in Depression America. The same is true of Warners films of the 40s or the RKO films of the 50s. They will last, whereas if you look at the A-movies of the time, the big glossy ones from MGM and Fox, they’re profoundly dreadful because they were not, when they were made, being made relevantin any social context.” Everyone involved with Mapantsula, on screen and off, is politically committed, Marcel van Heerden, who plays the Afrikaans police interrogator, combinesa career in the classical theatre with a radical Afrikaans rock group. Hannay puts it intoan Australian context by describing himself as the “John Bell of South Africa, and the Peter Garrett waswell.” Thembi Mitshalihas performed in Edinburgh, London and New York, and givesa wonderfully rich and uncluttered performance as the black housemaid caughtup in the political turmoil. It all works so well in Mapantsula because, according to Hannay, “she’s representing something so close, something that you know from your own family and relations.” Mitshali’sisa crucialrolein Mapantsula: “That line is incredibly important. The domestic workers are in different people’s houses, so they’re not working together and it takes along time to organise them politically. Yet these black women have been exposed to white liberals, they have access to books that they wouldn’t normally have. It's all part of the slow and agonising emergence of black feminism, which also has to deal with the problem of detribalised maleswhowon’tdo anything. These women get up at 2 or 3 in the morning, get the kids ready to go to their grandmother, while the old fellow’s still in bed asleep. He’s probably not working, but he can’t be seen taking them off to the grandmother’s. Then the . mother will catch the train or bus, travel for 2 or 3 hours, until she - smiles in her nice white starched number to wake up master and

madam at 7 o’clock with the paper.” Hannay quotes van Heerden as saying that Thomas Mogotlane is “the most important film artist South

Africa has produced.” Mogotlane co-wrote Mapantsula, and gives a marvellously sinuous and equivocal performance as Panic. Panicisan unscrupulous chap who is “literally dragged kicking into supporting his people.” Hannay sees Panic’s lack of scruples asa reflection,of a different take on morality: “In a third world, culture crime doesn’t have the same impact. There’s nothing wrong with being a street hustler —you’re simply surviving. People are not heroic, they’re survivors.” The film’s soundtrack, which Polygram Australia would only release on import, is supplied by the Ouens, a group of African musicians who came together working on projects like Paul Simon’s Graceland. One member of the group, lan Osrin, isactualy Afrikaans, and “uncomfortable in white company. He’s very prickly, paranoic, intensely intellectual, with a degree in Business Studies, of all things! He has apassion for change and for black music, and he wants to get that through. He personally hates Graceland.” One of the most powerful pieces of music in the film is the seemingly spontaneous singing by the men in prison. Hannay saw this as an extension of the African way of approaching theatre: “Black theatre evolves out of workshops. All the actors have an input — it’s a bit like Mike Leigh’s method of making a film. They’re naturally creative, rather than interpretative, artists. They will bring everything that is real and endemic to that scene. As far as singing is concerned, you can just be hanging out ata backyard - barbecue, and people will start to sing.” , - Hannay wants Mapantsulato get across to as large an audience as ‘possible: “We madeitasa “mainstream film. There’s no point in going into Soweto witha 16mm camera, shooting the shit out of the place and doing something that has everyone saying later, ‘great try’, ‘great effort’, but will only play in university cine clubs.” It’sbeen tough to market the film in the States: “It’s not Gerard _ Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve walking down Rodeo Drive wearing afur coat and talking French,” —but there is a possibility of American distributor Ray Gaspard showing the movie in New York’s Apollo Theatre. Hannayendswithawry observation about the American situation: “In America we have the people who have the potential to be the best-informed in the world. They have the best media and the best . access to media. They have the most extraordinary freedoms that are guaranteed like in no other country, and yet they don’t use those freedoms, and they’re forgotten.” Mapantsulagives a chilling vision of the freedoms that still have to be fought for. ,

William Dart