Abstract
This chapter provides a discussion of ethnic films in South Africa by tracing the historical development of “national” and “ethnic” cinema in the context of apartheid where creative and financial control of filmmaking was controlled by the state and white individuals who acted as surrogates of the state. The chapter interrogates the extent to which the “ethnic film” category can be applied to film productions that represented an inauthentic African worldview, culture, and tradition. It further argues that the categories of national and ethnic have shifted since the democratic elections of 1994 and in the post-1994, context and sectors of the Afrikaans-language film industry have now moved to the margins in what can be described as an “inward migration.” In the process, these films have become decentered and detached from the “national” industry and are now the new “ethnic” cinema in South Africa.
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Paleker, G. (2019). Ethnic Film in South Africa: History, Meaning, and Change. In: Ratuva, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0242-8_138-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0242-8_138-1
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