Arts writer
JUST weeks after the ANC’s announcement of its plans for South Africa to withdraw from the International Criminal Court following its failure to arrest international war criminal, Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bahir, a powerful film that showcases the everyday life of people persecuted by unjust laws of fake identity violently enforced by governments will be screened at The Labia from November 6, after garnering awards at festivals across the world.
Beats of the Antonov, which threads together the attempted destruction of Sudanese national identity by President al-Bashir’s war planes on the people of the Blue Nile village just outside the border of North Sudan has been described as a masterpiece of pure cinema.
The film shows the lives of displaced people who have lost family members, homes, farms and belongings. But instead of depicting a devastated and defeated society, it captures a vibrant matriarchal culture – proud African people who have found new purpose and energy in the face of conflict.
Once the Antonov Russian-made planes pass overhead, the people crawl out of their make-shift bomb shelters and caves, put out the fires on their homes and often stay up to dance and sing all night together to music played on a string instrument called the rababa, crafted from recycled material.
One man and a camera, unpeels a powerful and triumphant story without editorialising, or following any particular narrative voice of the devastating consequences of making and unmaking identity in a diverse country still at war with itself – and a leadership in Khartoum, unable to accept the blackness of its African citizens. “The idea that black is beautiful has not reached here,” says one villager interviewed.
Part of the documentary’s thrust is the disparity between the North’s push for homogeneity under a fake pan-Arab banner, and the South’s appreciation of diversity.
It is women who take up most of the camera time. “I believed them most” said Sudanese film director hajooj kuka, who spent 18 months living with the people of the Blue Nile. Kuka threads voices of militants, social workers, intellectuals and everyday folk to tell the story of a complex conflict. In doing so he breathes life into the often dry journalistic accounts of destruction.
Instead of telling the viewer what to think about the conflict, kuka brings a sense of the realities on the ground, a feeling for the place and the kinds of issues and important questions which people are living and thinking through.
Even without considering the difficult conditions kuka worked under, his lensing shifts from smooth, handsomely composed shots to agitated images as he ducks for cover, and captures the authenticity and intelligence of his subjects. Produced by Steven Markovitz.
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