Voicing the archive: documentary filmmaking and the political archive in South Africa
Date
2014-06-30
Authors
Louw, Elizabeth
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
This research, which includes a thesis and a documentary film, focuses on the
construction of a historical non-fiction film on anti-apartheid student protests at the
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg from 1957 to 1987. The restrictive
censorship legislation at the time hampered the local distribution of the recorded
footage and affected news reports on the nature of protests and protesters. The project
sets out to situate these events within aspects of the historical and political context of
the country, university, existing archive, individual and collective memory, the
problematic of producing documentary films, the performative nature of protest
action, the recording of testimonies and the production process. The research provides
a framework for recording the interviews, collecting archival footage and
photographs, and for constructing the narrative for the film. The thesis also considers
the need for a “biographical” index for the construction process in order to rid the
archive of subjective and political bias in an attempt to illuminate archiving processes
such as the production of a historical documentary film. The project will show that
although theoretical claims regarding the nature of truth in non-fiction filmmaking are
fraught and open-ended, the collective memories of the participants, combined with
relevant stock footage, can become a respectful collusion of voices.