Published: 1 May 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Claire Jankelson, who co-organised the festival with fellow expat Di Singer, says there is in South Africa today a kind of “ambition of intention, desire even, to live up to certain values” that she doesn’t see in many places in the world, Australia included.
The opening-night film Liyana is a genre-defying part-documentary, part-animation about five orphaned children who turn past trauma into a kind of fairytale. A discussion – led by award-winning film-maker Mark Radomsky and SBS’s Anton Enus, who was born in South Africa – will provide comment on the closing night for the film Kanarie.
Another of the festival’s eight films, High Fantasy, has four young people of different races camping together. They wake up inhabiting each other’s bodies. “They weren’t even alive in the time of Mandela but have been left with this unbelievably entangled legacy that they’re trying to make sense of. I’d say there’s a lot of truth-telling,” Jankelson says.
Whispering Truth to Power is about a remarkable woman, Thuli Madonsela, who was South Africa’s public protector, and is credited with having exposed and brought down Jacob Zuma, the fourth president of South Africa.
The Saturday night gala screening will be followed by a party with all things South African – food, drink and entertainment, including diva performer Zimbabwe-born Tarisai Vushe.
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There are a couple of thrillers, among them Nommer 37, a Hitchcock-style rear-window [in Afrikaans with subtitles] directed by a 29-year-old black woman, and another set in a part of the Cape Flats reputed to be one of the most violent places on earth.
“We are looking at post-apartheid SA. Many of the stories are bleak,” Jankelson says. “But it’s a picture of a place with an extraordinary, entirely progressive constitution in terms of equality for all. There are 11 official languages at this stage, and that side of things is incredibly powerful.”
The festival format was imported largely from Canada – Vancouver and Toronto have had successful versions for nine and five years, respectively – with some branding tweaks for the local market. All three festivals are raising money for Education without Borders, with which the Canadian-South African founders are closely linked.
For the sake of organisational practicality, the festival is being held at Westfield Bondi Junction, but in future Jankelson sees it expanding, maybe to Parramatta, which has a big South African community.
“We have tried not to appeal to the Jewish SA population only; it’s open to a whole range of South Africans. I’d guess 60 per cent (of the audience) will be Jewish, but I do believe our feelers have gone quite broad,” she says. Another aspiration is to give maybe 10 per cent of profits to an Aboriginal cause.
It’s a complex identity being a well-intentioned white Jewish South African/Australian or Australian/South African. And, it can be confronting. Jankelson’s family spans continents, with siblings in Israel and the US. And there are, of course, other international connections: when her father was 11, he fled from Vilna, Poland, to South Africa, where Claire grew up under apartheid.
Side by side with her Jewish identity, Jankelson (an academic at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management who is also on the board of the Emanuel Synagogue) is immensely thankful to South Africa and saddened by its brain drain.
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“We are only who we are, with all the privilege that we have in Australia, because of our upbringing in SA and of the amazing education we had there, the university education, because of apartheid that gave us all that privilege that enabled us to create the kind of life we’ve had here. As well as the fact that it was a safe haven for Jewish people to come and land from Europe.”
While raising money for the festival among many extremely wealthy South African people in Australia, she was shocked to come across those who said: “I left SA 40 years ago, and I left because I wanted to. In other words, there is no sense or feeling for the country that I come from.”
“With one man, I said, ‘How can you speak that way, saying that? It’s like denying your mother or father, and however much you might like or not like them, you can’t deny them. Where you are born is what made you, and it was a haven for our grandparents.’
“He turned around and said that’s a good line, you got me there. He hasn’t donated yet, and I don’t know that he will, he’s quite a cynical person,” Jankelson says.
“You really do get a range of types of ex-South Africans. There are some that still carry a lot of feeling for their past and there are those that definitely don’t want to know, and they say, ‘So, what are you doing here in Australia?’”
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South Africans, in a way, are the ultimate wandering Jews, Jankelson says. “We were one generation in SA, and, while not having the poverty issues of half the world, we do face incredibly tricky issues of who we are and finding a place that is ethical inside ourselves.
“Giving back is not my thing, it’s too impossible to try and quantify. But part of my desire for doing it [the festival], and doing it well, is to remind South Africans where we come from, and especially Jewish South Africans, and then maybe they will wake up to their own intentions and desires.
“It was a powerful country with a hell of a lot of polarities, but also a huge spirit. Let’s just put apartheid aside for a moment. There’s actually the value of growing up in an African country and being exposed to an African sensibility and even, let’s call it an ubuntu spirit [a spirit of collectivity]. I think it’s just very, very natural over there, that spirit.”
She believes Australians will enjoy the festival, too. They are intrigued by South Africa because they are so many expats and their children living in their midst, as well as having a similar colonial background that creates very strong resonances. Australians fought in the Boer War and there’s the “call of Africa and safari and the wild”.
Jankelson says: “Any Australian you speak to that has actually gone to SA, they are so enthusiastic to talk about the amazing place it is. In fact, I was just with someone the other day and for them, SA is their favourite place in the world.”
Sydney South African Film Festival, Event Cinemas Bondi Junction, May 9-May 19
Photo: Still from Beyond The River
