Yearly Archives: 2010

The Party

In the opening of George Orwell’s powerful novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, everyman Winston Smith describes his physical surroundings. The clock strikes a punctilious 13 as our protagonist drags himself up seven flights of stairs due to the poorly maintained elevator and electrical shortages.

 

The weather reflects his life; there is a “vile wind” and it is bitterly cold, but at the same time it is a “bright” day — even among the misery and squalor, there appears some glimmer of hope that we can hang on to.

 

Using Smith as the focus of a third-person narrator, Orwell manipulates our feelings and sense of hope throughout the novel. By placing us in the shoes of an Outer Party member, we feel the intimidation and drudgery of Winston’s life. Within the first few pages we see the imposing image of Big Brother, we smell the acrid odour of boiled cabbage (a traditional fare for the poor), and we hear the droning of the telescreen.

 

It is an effective means of creating the fear and loathing a Party member endures. For readers living in a modern liberal democracy, the level of oppressiveness is unfathomable. There is a tedious sameness that smothers Winston’s very being.

 

A point of difference, however, is that while we are incensed by the oppression and injustice of his world compared with ours, Winston has lost his point of reference for a previous life; he has “no memories of anything greatly different”. The tactics of total control by the Party have begun to take hold for those like Winston.

 

Yet, as the third-person narrator, we become aware that he is different. The very nature of his job in the Ministry of Truth ensures that he must maintain some logic. The capacity to comprehend, interpret and ultimately alter facts about the past puts Winston in a position of regularly exercising induction and rationale.

Read more here.

 

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela is one of the twentieth century’s greatest political figures. Incarcerated in prison for over 20 years due to his role in fighting apartheid Mandela came to symbolise the injustice of apartheid and his fate became a rallying cry for those committed to its overthrow.

Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.

Nelson Mandela

“Our single most important challenge is therefore to help establish a social order in which the freedom of the individual will truly mean the freedom of the individual. We must construct that people-centred society of freedom in such a manner that it guarantees the political liberties and the human rights of all our citizens.”

Nelson Mandela, speech at the opening of the South African parliament, Cape Town 25 May 1994.

“I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for, and to see realised. But my Lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Nelson Mandela, defence statement during the Rivonia Trial, 1964. Also repeated during the closing of his speech delivered in Cape Town on the day he was released from prison 27 years later, on 11 February 1990.

The District Six Museum : The Good News

Noor Ebrahim, who was expelled from Cape Town’s District Six suburb under apartheid, talks about Nelson Mandela – and the good news about the suburb:

(Transcript of video clip soundtrack)

If you look at Mr. Mandela. He spent 27 years behind bars, fighting apartheid. And Mandela was a freedom fighter. But you know what the government called Mandela? They said he was a terrorist. He wasn’t a terrorist, he was a freedom fighter. Nobody wanted to release Mandela. Of course FW [FW de Klerk] made the changes. Maybe he was forced to but he made the changes. And I remember when Mandela was released in 1990. All he said was I don’t hate you and I forgive you for what you did to me. So Mandela is a very, very good example, not only to South Africans, but I think to the world in forgiving people.

I was, what, almost 51 years old when I had my first vote. And I couldn’t believe it, you know, I just couldn’t believe it. As I said never thought I would see this day. But we just glad its over. And also, when I say this, people can’t understand this also when I say whatever the government did to us we don’t hate them, we forgive them.

The good news is people who used to live here are coming back. So they were building houses again. In fact the first 24 families moved in already. People over the ages of 80 and 90, the elderly, but they are going to build between three and four thousand houses. People are very, very excited. I am so excited I can’t wait to move back, because District Six will always be my home. My heart is still here. That’s why I am really looking forward to moving back here.

 

 

District Six

District Six was established adjacent to the downtown core in 1867 as the “Sixth Municipal District of Cape Town” – a mixed community of freed slaves, merchants, artisans, labourers and immigrants. Over the next century the modest area grew into a cosmopolitan melting pot boasting a rich jazz scene. Later, as the dark years of apartheid clamped down on the city, it became a haven for musicians, writers and politicians looking for a moment of escape. In the words of legendary South African jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, District Six was a “fantastic city within a city. Where you felt the fist of apartheid, it was the valve to release some of that pressure.”

 

However, by the mid sixties the government had the community in its sights. In 1966, after allowing the area’s infrastructure to crumble for years, the government classified District Six a slum and declared it a ‘whites only’ area under the infamous Groups Area Act. Forced removals began two years later and by 1982 sixty thousand people had been relocated to the Cape Flats township some 25 kilometres away. District Six was razed to the ground and, despite having once been home to a tenth of Cape Town’s population, the area remains barren wasteland to this day.

 

The Truman Show – The Halloween Edition

I was asked about lighting and here are some ideas from BFI.


The Truman Show combines personal drama with an incisive critique of contemporary media. Peter Weir frequently stages action and composes shots so that the real world is imbued with a fantastical and certainly uneasy sense of the overly perfect. The lighting for much of the film is high key, which means the images have a flat, bright quality. It appears almost too perfect and artificial, which as we discover is exactly the situation – the world that Truman inhabits is a television studio set. For those scenes where Truman finds himself challenged by his environment and therefore compelled to question it, the lighting changes. Several key sequences, when issues are raised that Truman has to deal with, occur at night. The film uses a barrelling effect to suggest we are watching some of the action through a hidden camera, for example when Truman goes to cross the water. A barrelling effect is achieved when a wide-angle lens is attached to the camera and the rim of the lens is just about visible at the edge of the frame.