19 September, 2018 - 08:04
The tagline for Sew The Winter To My Skin, a new film by South African director Jahmil X.T. Qubeka-One mans bandit is another mans champion-frames the essential question at the heart of the story. Distinctly South African in flavor, but universal in its themes is what drew Qubeka to reimagine the story of John Kepe, a legendary outlaw of the early days of apartheid. By ANYA WASSENBERG
I chose the legend of John Kepe-for me, it was a great canvas for grappling with humanity and all its contradictions, he says. It allows me to take the archetypes and mess with them.
The film made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and its the second movie the South African filmmaker has premiered at TIFF. In 2013, his film Of Good Report screened there after it was briefly banned by the South African Film & Publications Board, and withdrawn from the Durban International Film Festival. Qubeka is often dubbed controversial because of the blow back, but its not a label he identifies with. Its not something I court. Despite the there is no bad publicity adage, he says the bad buzz that followed Of Good Report caused more harm than good. In the end, its just about making movies. I dont concern myself with overall conclusions, he says. The minute an audience sees something, it becomes theirs. I consider myself an entertainer.
The story of Sew The Winter To My Skin takes place in the 1950s, not long after the all-white National Party gained power and apartheid became an entrenched system. It covers the last chase of the white Afrikaner sheep ranchers as they close in on the bandit who stole from their flocks to give to the people who were dubbed natives in the local press.
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According to Qubeka, despite all its peculiarities, you can draw parallels between the conflicts inherent to South Africa and any other place in the world-power and powerlessness; the creation of myths to support the status quo. It divided people up along race lines, he notes, there were two realities in the same space. What is reality by consensus?
When the white Afrikaners ride in on horseback to put up forcible eviction notices to appropriate the land, beating and shooting anyone who protests with the law on their side, the question of who is the outlaw comes into sharp focus. However, Qubekas version portrays Kepe as a man with his own contradictions. He says he was inspired, in part, by a photograph hed seen of Kepe, still commanding a powerful physical presence even as he was led in chains to his trial. Actor Ezra Mabengeza embodies that sense of a man larger than life, who fed on his own sense of legend. He called himself the Samson of the Boschberg. Qubeka wondered how Kepe saw himself, and found a man who refused to disappear into history, crushed by oppression. No matter how fucked up our reality is, we all want to be etched in the fabric of time.
The movies cinematography mirrors the emotional tug of the soundtrack, ranging from sweeping shots of Kepe riding a horse at breakneck speed through the gorgeous landscape, to gut wrenching close up shots of a childs face as she painfully waits for the ranchers to pass her by unharmed. Qubeka says he was inspired in part by the look of old westerns. The combination of angles and perspectives is immersive and existential in scope.
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19 September, 2018 - 08:04 
