Film Festival Film #3: Sea Point Days

[bcholmes]

Sea Point Days is a documentary about a neighbourhood of Cape Town. According to the director, Cape Town is still the most segregated place in South Africa, but Sea Point is one of the few places that has a degree of racial integration.

It's not an "explain the historical context to you" type of documentary. It's more a slice of life thing. We see a variety of people in the film opining about their neighbourhood. One guy, who looks like an Aryan poster child, runs the neighbourhood "Bother the Homeless" society. A couple of elderly women chat about getting older, and occasionally make painfully racist remarks ("There's no place for the white man in the country any more..."). There's a black Muslim man who, while possibly the most open and kind-hearted guy in the film, acknowledges that there's a lot of old hatred that will take a generation or two to get away from.

I did find the film a bit problematic in that the white folk in the film were all middle-class whereas a large number of the black folk were homeless. I suppose I'm glad I saw it, but it wasn't the greatest thing since sliced bread.