Documenting life in southern Africa - Stefanie Sycholt
Stefanie Sycholt had a privileged upbringing. In addition to being white in apartheid South Africa—no small privilege in itself—as the daughter of a landscape and wildlife photographer, she spent every school holiday with her father in the wilderness of the Namibian desert. At the time, she resented spending time out in the bush while her friends were home, enjoying outings to the cinema. “It was only much later that I realized what an incredible experience it had been,” says the soft-spoken South African filmmaker. “Nature was so pristine and devoid of human presence. I suppose it was one of the only merits of apartheid, that there were no tourists around.”Wildlife and politics were an integral part of Sycholt’s life in South Africa. As the daughter of German immigrants, she was a first-generation South African, and felt less firmly rooted in white South Africa than her peers, whose families had been there for generations. While at high school in 1976, she saw a black student protest on television. The demonstration, which later came to be known as the Soweto Uprising, had begun as a rally against the enforced teaching of Afrikaans in black schools. Sycholt, who was, herself, uncomfortable with the fact that she had to learn Afrikaans as a second language, could relate to the student’s cause. When she saw the police open fire on the peaceful protestors, injuring many and killing 11-year-old Hector Peterson, Sycholt was shocked to the core. “I was 13 years old at the time and, at that moment, became radically politicized.” A determined optimist, then as now, appalled at the indifference of her school friends to the uprising, Sycholt decided to take matters into her own hands and persuaded teachers at her school to invite local black pupils to an interschool activity day. Things, however, did not go according to plan: fights broke out between black and white boys and some of the black schoolboys used the opportunity for some surreptitious flirting with white girls. “It was a complete disaster. I realized very quickly that it was going to take a lot more than goodwill to change the country.” But she was not daunted. Once at university—Sycholt studied political science and English literature at an English college in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal province—she joined the National Union of South African Students, one of the many organizations that, along with the trade unions and churches, had attempted to fill the void created after Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment and by the outlawing of the ANC in the 1960s. She was appointed media officer to the union’s head office and, among other things, compiled a booklet aimed at increasing the white population’s understanding of the ANC together with students who had visited exiled members of the Congress in Lusaka. For Sycholt, it was an exciting but dangerous period of her life. “It was a time when laws were rigidly enforced. I never thought I would see the end of apartheid in my lifetime.”
But the end did come and, although South Africa is currently struggling with high unemployment and rising crime rates, Sycholt believes that the majority of black South Africans are a freedom and peace-loving people, whose desire to live in a well-structured democratic society will prevail. This optimism and hope for the future of South Africa is reflected in her first feature film, Malunde, currently playing in cinemas around Munich. It is the story of a black street child who befriends an ex-army officer, a decorated hero of the erstwhile apartheid regime. Following the sudden dissemblance of apartheid, the two protagonists—neither with much to offer—find themselves, like thousands of other South Africans, struggling to find a new place and identity in their homeland. It is a parable of reconciliation for South Africa.
It was, in fact, the desire to create films such as Malunde that brought Sycholt to Munich over a decade ago, in 1991, where she studied film- making. Four documentaries, a number of short films and a feature film later, she is still here. “Through my parents I have a link to Germany, a foot in both continents, as it were. As a woman, I feel much more secure living and moving around on my own here. I wouldn't survive a week in Johannesburg. I also appreciate the access to foreign cultures and funding. I have a much greater scope for filmmaking here. But in my mind and in the way I feel and in the stories I want to tell, I am completely South African.” Indeed, one of her first documentaries covered the lives of a white family, a black family, and a mulatto family (mixed black & white) in the first democratic elections, in 1994, in a small town called Colesberg, and her graduation project for film school was a documentary on the music and origins of Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
Presently Sycholt is busy with two new projects. One is her next feature film, The Bridal Gown, which is set in colonial German southwest Africa just after the turn of the last century, for which she has already written the screenplay; the other, her first film set here in Germany. The filmmaker believes that Munich’s multicultural diversity is often overlooked. “There are so many foreigners who form part of the city's populace whom one doesn't really hear about or become aware of. Why do they choose this city? What brings them here? How do they exist?” asks Sycholt. Her screenplay Breathing is an episodic film of interconnected stories about people who come to Munich and the way their lives unfold in the city. “It’s about their dreams and also about facing reality. It is about breathing—that part of life that is our common denominator, and keeps us all going.”
So where does Sycholt get her inspiration? “I hang out a lot in Munich's cafés, where I scribble away at my stories. And Malunde has allowed me to travel to places I never even dreamed of: Toronto, Seattle, Tokyo, Bermuda.” More power to the hopes and dreams of this dedicated filmmaker.
