South African Documentary Festival in Berlin

 

The SOUTH AFRICAN DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL (SADF) is an independet event aiming at the establishment of cultural and dialogical bridges between Brazil and South Africa.

Post-colonialist structures result in similar social dynamics in both countries, in terms of building space diversity, subcultures' integration, revitalization of indigenous cultures, social justice, human rights, urban security and issues related to the management of environmental resources. The films selected for the Festival aim to make public such issues calling for the audience's engagement in causes that matter the most diverse sectors  of society through cinema.

The SADF was held in June/2015 at the Agora Collective which is a platform combining art, co-work and food. The Cafe Agora, based at the Collective, offered a menu inspired in the South African cuisine starting, inviting chefs based in Berlin. The films took place in the cafe, followed by the debates deepening the themes approached by the productions. The facilitators Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon and Cornelia Knoll presented interesting perspectives about the the themes. Most of the films were highly awarded and they are concerned with human rights and culture, framing social/political aspects of the country.

 

"South Africa is a country of many frontiers, which are constantly being crossed, broken and rebuilt – frontiers of landscape and language, of bricks and bodies.  In 1994 Nelson Mandela led and inspired the country after its first democratic elections, faced with the legacy of half a century of violent racial oppression under apartheid and centuries of colonial brutality.  However, post-apartheid society has grappled with numerous challenges – with extreme inequality, with millions infected with HIV AIDS, with xenophobia, with widespread sexual violence, crime, corruption, continual dispossession and labour disputes. Yet is also a society that continues to re-vitalize itself through art and ritual, through song and struggle.  Cosmopolitan cities spark across polychromatic grids of desert, mountain ranges and coast-lines. Ancestral traditions live along the electric lines, cellphone towers, clinics and coal-mines. Within this immense choreography of people and voices, of lives and spaces, film is emerging as a powerful media to capture these movements, the politics and paradoxes of a volatile society dealing with a singular history, but with universal consequences. This film festival aims to bring some of the most potent documentary films made in and about South Africa across its borders and oceans."

 

Text: Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon and Adriana Miranda da Cunha.