The Great White Hero again, Mandlela story needs the Great Tarzan

Rating: 1/10 (16 December 2009)

How many more? um? How many more SA films where the Africans are a backdrop to some White hero? Isn't the story Cry Freedom, or In My Country etc etc, or Catch A Fire? The engineered rainbow rhetoric which exist only only screen but nowhere in the economy of South Africa. The story of Africa always needs a great white hero, like Last King of Scotland. And not to mention more white directors. And they are searching hi and low 2 find the white Tarzan in every African victory.
Film is an art but I get concerned when every film out of SA sings the same theme. It speaks to something artificial, something social injustice. When did we see a film where whites didn't get let off the hook? When did we see a film where whites didn't exist?
Name a "Black film" and look behind the lens; who wrote it, who produced it, who directed it? Amistad , the music by John Williams, the director Mr. Spielberg. A Jamaican film called One Love , again the same pattern. Tsosti a story of violence in the African communities, violence is a natural reality of South African people in European perception; it sells and it feeds their image of us of being gang bangers, and semi-noble savages . It is almost impossible to consider a film that does not include a European central figure. War Dance, singing dancing through the horrors of a genocide. The recent Last King of Scotland reflects this it is in the legacy of CRY FREEDOM, the title shows the mindset behind it . I t would not be sufficient to tell the story of Idi Amin; so infamous enough and surely notorious enough character in his own right. No, they say, this would reduce the value of the project, in comes the European into the storyline. It is actually amazing to see Mel Gibson attempt to make a film of a non-White people without a central European character. Returning to the likes of Richard Attenborough we cannot blame him for his bias in Cry Freedom , he is by nature a European and is simply acting out his European weighted world view, avoiding Eurocentric as a term, as every healthy race is sensitive to his or her cultural perceptions