The Afrikaans Film Template

Feature films produced for the Afrikaans market in South Africa, have many distinctive characteristics, including that they're exclusively white.

A still from the Hollywood film, 'Out of Africa,' a colonial fantasy set mostly on a Kenyan farm.

The creatives at South African satellite TV channel Kyknet—which, more recently, also produces feature films—not only blatantly rip off American romantic comedy plotlines but inhabit a South Africa where not a single black face is to be seen. On the other hand, maybe they’re being honest.

Like for “Semi-Sweet.”

 

 

Further Reading

Davido’s jacket

Davido’s appearance at ‘Amapiano’s biggest concert’ turned a night of celebration into a study in Afrophobia, fandom, and the fragile borders of South African cultural nationalism.

Empty riddles

Drawing on his forced migration from Rwanda, Serge Alain Nitegeka reflects on the forms, fragments, and unsettled histories behind his latest exhibition in Johannesburg.