In post-apartheid South Africa, Coloured communities are engaged in
reconstructing identities and social histories. This study examines the
representation of community, identity, culture and historic memory in two
films about Westbury, Johannesburg, South Africa. The films are Westbury,
Plek van Hoop, a documentary, and Waiting for Valdez, a short fiction piece.
The ambiguous nature of Coloured identity, coupled with the absence of
recorded histories and unambiguous identification with collective cultural
codes, results in the representation of identity becoming contested and
marginal. Through constructing narratives of lived experience, hybrid
communities can challenge dominant stereotypes and subvert discourses of
otherness and difference. Analysis of the films reveals that the Coloured
community have reverted to stereotypical documentary forms in representing
their communal history. Although the documentary genre lays claim to the
representation of reality and authentic experience, documentary is not
always an effective vehicle for the representation of lived experience and
remembered history. Fiction can reinterpret memory by accessing the
emotional textures of past experiences in a more direct way.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/5837 |
| Date | 11 November 2008 |
| Creators | Dannhauser, Phyllis D. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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