Dylan Valley’s award-winning documentary, Afrikaaps, explores the racial and cultural identity of ‘coloured’ people through the use of artistic and creative expressions such as film, music, dance and poetry. This interlinks with academic research and the formula of the documentary in order for ‘coloured’ people to share their lived experiences and how they define themselves racially and culturally. The documentary explores the formulation of the ‘coloured’ race by analysing the historical perspective of slavery and the reality of miscegenation. According to Cheryl Hendricks, the concept of miscegenation led onto ‘coloured’ people being a hybrid group (Hendricks, 2001: 29). She discusses how the representations of those who were considered to be of ‘mixed’ descent are tied to racial and sexual politics and through this explanation, she makes an aside to the fact that the term ‘mixed descent’ has become a signifier of the ‘coloured’ race within South Africa (Hendricks, 2001: 29). The production and the documentary explore the roots of the Afrikaans language to understand how it came into existence. The director of the production, Catherine Henegan, explains how she wanted the production to explore the Java and Khoi-San roots in order to contextualise how they made a contribution to the Afrikaans language and its creation (www.citypress.co.za, 2011). She also aimed to deconstruct the ‘white Afrikaner identity’ because of the fact that Afrikaans was not a language that was formulated by the ‘white’ Dutch settlers but rather was a formation of creole languages combined with Dutch and aspects of other languages (www.citypress.co.za, 2011).
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BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Hendricks, Cheryl, 2001, “‘Ominous’ Liaisons: Tracing the interface between ‘race’ and sex at the Cape,” Coloured by History, Shaped by Place: New Perspectives on Coloured Identities, Zimitri Erasmus (ed.), Kwela Books and South African History Online.
ONLINE RESOURCE:
www.citypress.co.za/Entertainment/News/Afrikaaps-evolves-cuzzie-20100403
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FOR MORE INFORMATION ON DYLAN VALLEY - VISIT:
http://www.plexusfilms.co.za/team-detail.php?&teamid=212
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON CHERYL HENDRICKS - VISIT:
http://www.impumelelo.org.za/who-we-are/trustees/dr-cheryl-hendricks
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VIEW THE "AFRIKAAPS" TRAILER - VISIT:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYifENqE3hU
TO VIEW OTHER CLIPS OF "AFRIKAAPS" - VISIT:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Afrikaaps&aq=f
TO PURCHASE "COLOURED BY HISTORY: SHAPED BY PLACE" - VISIT:
http://www.amazon.com/Coloured-History-Shaped-Place-Perspectives/dp/1588681645/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311316928&sr=1-1
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