The trailer for “Black Butterflies,” the new Dutch film about the 1960s Afrikaans writer, Ingrid Jonker, is out. Jonker came to prominence when Nelson Mandela at his inauguration as South Africa’s first democratic president, quoted her poem, “Die Kind” [The Child]. She committed suicide in 1965. The film which covers Jonker’s affairs with publisher Jack Cope and fellow writer, André Brink, stars the well-known Dutch actors Carice van Houten and Rutger Hauer (as her father). Of course we should wait till the film comes out, but the trailer doesn’t help.

The trailer creates the impression that she had a continental impact; that was hardly the case. All the dialogue–in the trailer at least–appears to be in English when Jonker (and Cope and their mostly white circle) lived their lives and art mostly in Afrikaans (which is close to Dutch); have the producers not heard of subtitles? There’s also a curious Dutch translation of the word ‘South African’ as spoken by Mandela (sec 1:53) in the trailer.  In an earlier post, I also noted that the same person who brought us the deplorable “Goodbye Bafana”–the film about Mandela’s close relationship with his white prison guard–is writing the script.

Anyway, filmmakers have struggled to put Jonker’s life on the screen. The previous attempt–a documentary by Helena Nogueira didn’t quite pull it off.

Tom swears the best piece on Jonker is still that by the Dutch author, Henk van Woerden, who spent a significant part of his life in South Africa (resulting in a shamefully neglected trilogy about that period: “Moenie Kyk Nie,” “Tikoes” and “Mond Vol Glas”). The piece is included in Gerrit Komrij’s Jonker-anthology “Ik Herhaal Je.” Van Woerden, according to Tom, “… wrote the most insightful and ’emic’ piece on Jonker I have read so far. 40 pages of pure gold.”