Trends in South African documentary film and video: questions of identity and subjectivity

Abstract

This paper focuses on the development of an anti‐apartheid documentary film and video ‘movement’ in the period spanning the late 1970s to the early 1990s. It discusses the growth of independent film‐making as well as a number of organisational developments, which formed the basis of this ‘movement’. The paper broadly describes some of the trends that have emerged and places these within a theoretical framework that identifies and examines questions of identity and subjectivity. It proposes that new theoretical work is needed to represent South African ‘hybridity’ and examines what seems to be a shift towards representing ‘hybridity’ in recent forms of anti‐apartheid documentary film and video.