The Belfast Connection
I recently interviewed the Northern Irish filmmaker Phil Harrison (credit: "Even Gods"), who is crowd-funding his first feature, "The Good Man," set in Ireland and South Africa. The film tells the stories "of a young banker in Belfast and a teenager living in a Cape Town township. When their lives unexpectedly collide, their impact on one another is far greater, and more surprising, than either could have imagined." Phil, writes: "In terms of the stage we are at we have almost reached our corwdsourcing target--there's less than 50 shares left of the 400 total." If you want to support the film, by becoming a shareholder, click here. Some production notes: The actor Aiden Gillen (credits: The Wire--he played Baltimore's Mayor Carcetti-- and Game of Thrones) has signed on to play the lead. Here's our email interview:
Can you tell us how you came to make the connections between South Africa and Northern Ireland which to some may not be that obvious?
I'm from Belfast. In my early twenties I did what a lot of white Westerners do, and volunteered in an orphanage in South Africa's Kwazulu-Natal province, just outside the city of Pietermaritzburg. I was struck, even at the time, by the problematic nature of 'charitable' involvement by westerners like myself, engaging with the 'problems of Africa'--oversimplification, naivete (on my part), a fundamental failure to engage with or even understand the political nature of people's lives and struggles.
I was subsequently involved in various community development projects back in Ireland, and became increasingly interested in the role of creativity in protest and struggle: how people use photography, poetry, film, music to articulate ideas of identity which move away from and subvert those foisted on them - this is certainly true where I grew up, in Belfast, and I began, after doing a Masters degree in postcolonial literature and theology, to explore this in an African context. I spent a bit of time traveling in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2007--Malawi, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Ghana--just meeting artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and reading the histories of the likes of Seydou Keita, Djibril Diop Mambety, Lewis Nkosi, Frantz Fanon; artists subtly (and occasionally not so subtly) playing with notions of identity and authority, and helping critically dismantle social patterns and languages of oppression. The idea for the film came very simply: to creatively bring together the two post-conflict societies I was most familiar with/interested in and see what would come out of the engagement.
You're working with the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign in Cape Town. Can you more about that collaboration and how it came about and how it works?
When I first began exploring this idea, I was drawn to the organisations which make up the Poor People's Alliance in South Africa: Abahlali base Mjondolo, the Anti-Eviction Campaign, the Landless People's Movement, etcetera; organizations which represented, it seemed to me, much more of the truth of the new South Africa (in opposition to the 'Rainbow Nation' myth so easily thrown about). I was struck, when I spent 6 weeks in the country in 2007, how little had changed since my time there almost a decade before. Wealth seemed largely to be in the same hands, albeit with a small black elite gaining some access. I was struck by Michael MacDonald's analysis (in 'Why Race Matters in South Africa') that what the ANC had essentially achieved was political power at the expense of economic power--in the 'transformation' wealth and capital were largely untouched, despite white fears. But as Fanon had pointed out over thirty years prior, unless capital itself is restructured for the benefit of the many, a country has not experienced 'liberation'.
The Poor People's Alliance movements seemed the most articulate voice in all of this, the most prophetic--they were hugely under-resourced, but well organized and democratic. I moved to Cape Town in 2009 for the year and spent many months meeting with some AEC members in Gugulethu, who introduced me to many people in the area who told me their own stories and concerns. After a few months I chatted through the idea of a feature film with the AEC team - the idea was that I would write a fictional script based on what I had learned. Mncedisi (the chairperson) agreed to proofread the script and give a final okay, which was crucial in ensuring that the story stays true to the experiences and stories of the people I had met in the process.
How do you avoid that your South African location does not become background 'décor' for a story about injustice, interchangeable with any other place?
The film itself is rooted in Gugulethu, and we are employing people from the township in the crew and cast--both professional and non-professional actors, film students, etcetera. Extras will come from the areas within Gugs [how local residents refer to the area] in which we're filming. The stories within the narrative all reflect genuine stories and experiences I encountered there. There is a real sense, of course, that these experiences are universal--the lack of adequate housing, the fear of crime, the failure to deliver on the promises of transformation. Good storytelling, I feel, always walks that line, where the particular stands in for the universal--but the stories have come directly from the streets where we are filming, rather than being imposed from the outside.
At the heart of the film is the question: "What does it mean to be good?" On the film's website you've written that it "is a simple question without a simple answer." Do you think you closer to that answer?
No. If anything, the question breaks down into more questions, about language, about intention, about capitalism. What can a phrase like 'goodness' mean in a system which is fundamentally amoral? In the current critique of banker's greed, the bailout, etc, I think it's vital to explore the underlying rationale of 'the market'. The 'system' is not just a set of financial and political structures, but a series of underlying assumptions, ideologies. And as Slavoj Zizek points out, ideology is at its most powerful when it appears invisible, 'normal'. In a small way the film is trying to wrestle with some of this stuff, albeit non-didactically and without proposing simple solutions.
How does your approach break with films on and about South Africa. I detect a critique of what passes for the film industry in Cape Town and, in some senses, a South African film industry?
I guess we're trying to do this at two levels. Firstly is the story we're telling; not a rosy-hued 'rainbow nation' version of South Africa, a la 'Invictus', but one where, for very many people - maybe over half the population--transformation has not really worked. And secondly, by involving local people/filmmakers in the actual process. The film industry in Cape Town is still very white, and heavily indebted to the commercials industry; young, black filmmakers struggle for opportunities in this context. It sometimes seems that to achieve anything you have to get sponsored by a sneaker brand or a beer company. We are building a crew with young, talented filmmakers from Gugulethu/Langa etc, and aim to help everyone involved step up a level in terms of skills and experience. We have also built a financial model to ensure that returns from the film also flow back into the places where we're filming. 10% of any return worldwide goes back to filmmakers/artists/activists in the townships.
Irish investors--more from south of the border--are heavily involved in the construction of luxury apartments in Cape Town and in changing the city, making it glitzy but also more unequal? How does that play into your script? Are people in Belfast or Dublin even aware of the Irish presence in South Africa?
I would say most people are unaware of the Irish construction presence in South Africa. And that presence is wide-ranging, from Habitat-style building projects which are actually spoken of very highly by many people I came across, to the high-end glitzy hotel-type development projects. The presence of western companies in South Africa is something the film explores, though I'm not going to give away just how. But it is a clearly a vital component of how we are connected - how the money from my savings or bank account in Belfast impacts communities thousands of miles away, often in surprising and problematic ways.
* Images: Courtesy of Phil Harrison.
