Local film at Joburg film festival
Starts in Sandton on 27 February
The Namibian movie Under the Hanging Tree will soon be shown at a South African film festival.
The local film Under the Hanging Tree, which had been entered for this year's Oscars, will be screened at the Johannesburg Film Festival.Both the film's director Perivi John Katjavivi and lead actress Girley Jazama will be received as guests of honour at the festival which starts on 27 February in Sandton.
Katjavivi already began writing a police series in 2018 and last year launched the product of the writing, Under The Hanging Tree, in the capital.
The movie is about a hardened policewoman who has to face a dark reality after a man's lifeless body with a rope around his neck is found hanging from a tree.
Jazama's character, Christina, must consequently open up old wounds when her investigation leads her to Namibia's genocide.
"My interest is not so much in the genocide as an event. I was not interested in a police movie or so much the genocide or colonialism. I just wanted to create a piece that touches the mind and the heart; of what it's like to live now and look back at the darkness of our colonial history," Katjavivi said in an interview with Republikein last year.
The movie lends some of its style and filming techniques from film noir, a style generally using contrasting light to depict the paleness of certain elements and to bring out underlying existentialist themes.
Under the Hanging Tree also stays true to its Namibian background with Otjiherero sayings to indicate the various parts as well as references to cultural beliefs such as Christina's aunt who says that trees are the "womb" from which all people arise.
"Katjavivi does not fall into the trap of making the film a commercial thriller. Instead, he chooses to tell a story that is slower, more critical, compulsive and decisive," wrote Sarala Krishnamurthy in The Conversation. - [email protected]