The docLOVE team are excited to launch our new season of films, supported by the PESP4 and National Film and Video Foundation, with Milisuthando.
Set in past, present, and future South Africa — an invitation into a poetic, memory-driven exploration of love, intimacy, race, and belonging by the filmmaker, who grew up during apartheid but didn’t know it was happening until it was over. Filmmaker, writer and poet Milisuthando Bongela’s youth in South Africa was untouched by the​ horrors, violence, or even the presence of white occupiers to her land. At least that’s how it​ seemed.​ The Transkei, an unrecognized Black independent region established by the apartheid regime,​ created the illusion for Black South Africans that separate could be equal. And paradoxically for​ Bongela, life in The Transkei proved as idyllic as the propaganda claimed. Until it was over.​ The fall of apartheid ushered in a new life, one that included – for the first time – whiteness.​ MILISUTHANDO is a deeply intimate portrait of past, present and future South Africa, blending​ poetry, film, and photography into a striking cinematic essay. Bongela explores love, friendship​ and belonging in a South Africa stratified by racism – proving that only if we understand its​ tentacles, can we begin to extricate ourselves from its clutches.