Creative Week Cape Town

Afrikaaps

This documentary film is part of the Music City: A Documentary Festival on Cape Music (10 – 15 September 2011)

On the surface, Afrikaaps appears to be a theatre piece within a film, based as it is on the creative processes and performances of the critically acclaimed stage production of the same name. But rather than depending on the drama on stage and the production’s prominent characters to carry the narrative, Valley finds revealing moments from the cast’s and production crew’s personal narratives that transcend what happens on stage. Afrikaaps, the film and the stage play, breaks ground by boldly attempting to reclaim Afrikaans – so long considered a language of the oppressor – as a language of liberation. It does this by foregrounding alternative histories of ‘the Creole birth’ of the language and shattering long-existing efforts to whitewash and purify Afrikaans. While the ideas of the film are informed by rigorous academic study, the presentation of those ideas are steeped in the now – conveyed by hip hop-generation Cape Town-based artists like Jitsvinger, Bliksemstraal, Blaq Pearl and Emile YX, who school audiences with an immediacy, irreverence and vibrancy often frowned upon in the academy. DIR: Dylan Valley / South Africa / 2010 / 60min

Creative Week Cape Town has partnered with The Encounters Documentary Festival, The Cape Film Commission and Cape MIC to bring you a documentary festival focussed on music. The concept of the festival is centred on the extensive catalogue of documentaries produced in the Cape about the region’s music. Included in the programme are some sell-out productions from previous film festivals. These include Afrikaaps, Fokofpolisiekar’s “Forgive them for they know not what they do”, Mr Devious: My Life and The Black. Each screening is preceded by student works from the Film and Media Department of the University of Cape Town.

Contact: The Labia, Ph: www.labia.co.za

Who: Encounters Documentary Festival is Africa’s premier documentary festival now in its 13th year. Cape Film Commission is the official film industry development and support body. Cape MIC is the official music industry body.