Hout Bay, South Africa | A Country of Fishers (2017) full feature documentary

Documentary
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ABOUT THE FILM
Frustrated by Poverty, a dad sets off in deep conversation with fellow Rastafarians and a fisherman – – searching for meaning and purpose in order to overcome the engrossing poverty in their informal settlement on the mountainside of Houtbay.

LONG SYNOPSIS: Colonialism, slavery, apartheid and the struggle to provide for their offspring in the new South converges into a great philosophical encounter, with great cathartic consequence – for a group of impoverished philosophers on the informal settlement of Hangberg in Houtbay.
The film is an unobtrusive observational gem filmed by one of South Africa’s multi- award winning filmmakers.

REVIEWS:

“a powerful account of what is the realities of many South African’s and more over the fishers.” – Prof. Moenieba Isaacs.

“…In providing such a personal portrait of a single household, and allowing the rich dialogue between the men to flow so freely, he provides a tangible account of how the economic policies of neoliberalism and post-apartheid South Africa have constrained the lives and livelihoods of the poor in this country…”
– Encounters Documentary Film Festival

ABOUT THE FILMMAKER:
Riaan Hendricks is a multi-award winning documentary filmmaker heralding from the Cape Flats.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE FILM:

Hangberg is a growing overpopulated settlement on the mountainside of Hout Bay.

It was a labor camp initially set up to service the fishing industry of Hout Bay during apartheid South Africa – now derailed into an overpopulated settlement where people are struggling to overcome the socio-economic challenges – and despite the wealth of marine life on their doorstep – crime remains the only way to access a daily plate of food of these forgotten people.

When I made the film – I was merely trying to understand life for our fishing communities in South Africa. Hout Bay was one just of the planned stops. Yet, Hout Bay became my first and last stop.

I cancelled the entire coastal film journey – for what I found in one cinematic moment made me realize that the story of the Hangberg, Hout Bay fishing community is the story of our collective experience of fishing villages across South Africa. Where the people who live in rich natural resource areas, a dwindling away in poverty and crime. This happens in rural mining and farming communities as well, such as: The Marikana mining town tragedy where the poor miners were killed for asking an increase in salary – while the wealth of billions are being mined with their health, sweat and labour just beneath their overpopulated shacks that so easily floods with rain.

How much different is the encounter of the Hangberg community who were once forcefully removed during the apartheid era to settle on this mountainside as cheap labor – and having to face the wrath of the new South African law, who wants to get rid of their families who started building informal dwellings just behind the initial labor camp?

The history of the Hangberg Uprising – is a complex one.

But this is not a story of “apartheid was bad – let’s blame the whites.” And definitely not one of “the current political system will solve all our problems”.

Can any sense come from a group of men and woman – who smokes marijuana while engaging with the deep rooted issues affecting their family lives? Are they able to find themselves within the broader socio-political landscape of our country and our continent?
Can they change the future of the offspring – whose first informal employment is likely to be that of a poacher?

I could never have imagined that my encounter with a group of Rastafarians and subsistence fishers in Hout Bay, would result in such an intellectual and cinematic emotional experience. I now cede – it’s true what BIKO said in 1971 “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”

https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/hangberg-hout-bay

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