{"id":18586,"date":"2023-05-09T15:16:18","date_gmt":"2023-05-09T13:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/?p=18586"},"modified":"2023-05-09T15:16:23","modified_gmt":"2023-05-09T13:16:23","slug":"milisuthando-announced-as-encounters-sa-international-documentary-festival-opening-night-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/blog\/2023\/05\/09\/milisuthando-announced-as-encounters-sa-international-documentary-festival-opening-night-film\/","title":{"rendered":"“Milisuthando” Announced As Encounters SA International Documentary Festival Opening Night Film"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Celebrating its 25th year as Africa\u2019s leading international documentary festival, year after year having proudly showcased the boldest, brightest and most compelling nonfiction films from South Africa,\u00a0 Africa and the world there could be no more fitting Encounters opening night offering (22 June) than Milisuthando<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fresh from its world premiere at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival, the film looks both backwards and forwards, digging deep into the legacy of apartheid and meditating on the future of South Africa, through its unflinching willingness to examine both the current state of the country and of the filmmaker\u2019s own complex identity, announcing the arrival of a fresh and exciting local filmmaker in director Milisuthando\u00a0 Bongela.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Stills from the opening night film of Encounters SA International Documentary Film Festival – Milisuthando – directed by Milisuthando Bongela.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cPremiering this film at home after so many years of brewing and cooking, my only hope is that it will add to the canon of a cinema that softens our understanding of the hardest parts of who we are as a people. And it is with love, as much love as we could muster, that my team and I share this story with South Africans.\u201d – <\/em>Milisuthando Bongela<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born in 1985 in Xhosa homeland Transkei, designed by the apartheid regime to belie a false sense of nationhood to the Black majority living there, Bongela\u2019s homage to herself explores her journey of discovery paralleled with the country\u2019s transition to freedom. In 1994, when the apartheid government fell and democracy came to South Africa, nine year old Bongela left behind the only world she knew – which no longer existed – and moved with her family to begin a new chapter in an integrated South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Stills from the opening night film of Encounters SA International Documentary Film Festival – Milisuthando – directed by Milisuthando Bongela.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Told through distinctly different chapters, each with an intention, tone, style of their own, the film deconstructs the documentary form even as it examines Bongela\u2019s upbringing, memories and multifaceted sense of self. Boasting an impressive and extensive trove of archival footage artfully juxtaposed, the effect is almost surreal, at times almost bittersweetly comedic, almost melancholic, and deeply challenging. Featuring interviews both old and new, smartly interpreted, old family footage from her comfortable and happy Transkei childhood home, as well as unflinching and painful contemporary conversations between herself, her family and her white producer, the film is one woman\u2019s bold personal examination that speaks to a greater South African reckoning – in search of who we are and where we\u2019ve come from. Raising questions more than offering answers, in a complex and conflicted country still processing its legacy of oppression, this is a bold, poetic statement of intent from a new filmmaking voice, not to be missed.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Stills from the opening night film of Encounters SA International Documentary Film Festival – Milisuthando – directed by Milisuthando Bongela.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

“Milisuthando not only challenges us to know and remember: it reminds us that we are inseparable from our histories. That to forget a place like Transkei would, for Bongela, be to forget herself.”  <\/em>– Rolling Stone<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Encounters runs from 22nd<\/sup> June till 2nd<\/sup> July 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following cinemas will be screening the 2023 Encounters\u2019 line-up:<\/p>\n\n\n\n