South African Cinema 1896–2010 by Martin Botha's (review)

Within South African Cinema 1896–2010, Martin P. Botha outlines the historical periods, movies, and filmmakers whose names graced the end credits of South African films throughout more than a century. The book consists of twelve chapters, ranging from the advent of the industry in 1895 (chapter 1) to "themes and aesthetics of post-Apartheid cinema" (chapter 12).

Though Botha's latest publication follows in the footsteps of earlier books such as Keyan Tomaselli's The Cinema of Apartheid (1989, Routledge) and Encountering Modernity: Twentieth Century South African Cinema (2006, Rozenberg Publishers) and Jacqueline Maingard's South African National Cinema (2007, Routledge), it differs substantially from the approaches followed by Tomaselli and Maingard. Similarly to Maingard, Botha discusses the different time periods of South African cinema within separate chapters. However, he is more descriptive and less prescriptive than Maingard, giving readers the opportunity to make up their own minds about aspects of it.

Yet, I would propose that an instructor or professor of film history or African studies use these latter two sources in tandem, because while I found Botha's chapter "B Scheme Films" somewhat short and disappointing, in a university or college curriculum one could easily combine it with readings from sections of Maingard's chapters that deal comprehensively with the subject. Similarly, Botha's first chapter, "Early South African Cinema: 1895–1948," should be combined with readings from Thelma Gutsche's authoritative The History and Social Significance of Motion Pictures in South Africa, 1895–1940 (1972, Howard Timmins) and the recently published Black and White Bioscope: Making Movies in Africa: 1899 to 1925, by Neil Parsons (2018, Intellect Books). I argue that therein lies one of the strengths of Botha's publication: he knows and understands the oeuvre and does not seek to redo or rewrite the work of those scholars who came before him. Instead he opts to focus on his field of speciality, namely auteur studies.

No stranger to historical accounts of his native country's film industry, Botha has written and edited several books on the topic. This includes 1992's Images of South Africa: The Rise of the Alternative Film (with Adri van Aswegen, Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa) and Movies, Moguls, Mavericks: South African Cinema, 1979–1991 (edited by Johan Blignaut and Botha, Showdata) as well as the 2007 anthology, Marginal Lives and Painful Pasts: South African Cinema After Apartheid (Genugtig!). Botha continued this preference of auteur studies with books devoted to Manie van Rensburg (with Hubert Dethier, 1997, Vubpress) and Jans Rautenbach (2006, Genugtig!). Since these books were published in Dutch and Afrikaans respectively, one can understand why he aimed to summarize some of the content from the latter two publications in this book's chapter 4 and 5. In his own words Botha writes in the introduction of South African Cinema 1896–2010 that with this publication he aimed to spotlight the oeuvres of significant directors that Maingard as well as Isabel Balseiro and Ntongela Masilela (To Change Reels: Film and Film Culture in South Africa; 2003, Wayne State University Press) ignored. Therefore, apart from his chapters on Rautenbach and Van Rensburg, he focuses on South African directors of the 1980s and honors Ross Devenish with a chapter discussing this director's oeuvre in terms of themes and aesthetics.

South African Cinema 1896–2010's seemingly objective title (without a subtitle indicating a specific focus) suggests an attempt by Botha to steer away from clear slant in terms of paradigm or ideology and to give an unbiased (if one can divorce oneself from history), descriptive account of films produced both within South Africa and by South Africans in exile. Botha's approach reminds me of Robert Ross's A Concise History of South Africa (1999, Cambridge University Press), which provides a short history of the country for university readers and general interest readers. Precisely therein lies the distinguishing factor of Botha's recent publication: he synthesizes the history of the country's film industry in a...