The Namibian lights bright, music meanders from jukeboxes, cell phones and stalls as a teenager buys a porsie chips at a rundown kiosk and a single mother tries to make ends meet down a street.
In life and in cinema, this is Katutura. Brought spectacularly to screen by co-writer and director Florian Schott alongside screenwriter, producer and lead actor Obed Emvula, ‘Katutura’ is presented as a reflection, an escalation and a fast paced simulation of a township we all know but are yet to truly discover as a site of storytelling and fabrication within the action genre.
Hyperbolising the community’s relatively tame and perhaps disorganised crime scene to the level of a gang-run township replete with king pin and snickering brute squad, ‘Katutura’ plays out with clear influences from ‘City of God’ and ‘Tsotsi’ with a heartfelt homage to ‘Magnolia’.
Traversing the trials inherent in a township and alternately trying to restore pride in ‘the place where we do not belong’ are Dangi, Esme, Foibe, Kondja, a pastor and the gangster Shivago whose lives all knit and race towards a gripping conclusion.
Starring Chops Tshoopara, Odile Muller, Tjuna Kauapirura, Gift Uzera, Bonnie Pereko and Obed Emvula respectively, ‘Katutura’ presents a crop of gifted local actors orbiting around outstanding performances by Uzera as the wheelchair bound Kondja caught in the first blush of love and low level crime, Muller, the drug addicted Esme warped by her own demons, Pereko, the crook turned clergyman, and Emvula, the king pin who stuns as the grinning, ruthless and villainous Shivago.
Flush with fantastic editing by Haiko Boldt, stunning scenes composed by by Trevor A Brown, Bobby Cardoso and Lara-Lyn Ahrens and world class direction by Schott, ‘Katutura’s’ main criticism is levelled at its narrative.
With Katutura’s real life relative safety a glaring antithesis to Emvula’s gang-run, gun-happy invention, ‘Katutura’s’ story and stride seems more in line with South Africa’s Soweto than a real reflection of the modern day township.
Of course, this begs the question of whether a film that identifies itself as fiction should indeed be held to some standard of documentary and rabid authenticity. Not at all necessarily.
But, perhaps, in this case, it should.
Particularly, if it is bold enough to emblazon the name of a real life community on a title screen and envisions touring the world as a manifestation of a real place full of real people.
Like any place, Katutura has many true stories to tell. From taxi culture to passion killings to the kapana trade and the reality of drugs, alcohol abuse and crime interspersed between shocking poverty, shack fires and simple human narratives which can be just as absorbing as revenge stories, diamonds, gangsters and love triangles.
Though Emvula wrote a thrilling tale of lives beautifully intertwined, perhaps there is an opportunity missed. To represent Katutura not just in its idiosyncrasies, characters and settings, which the film does wonderfully, but rather in an authentic story which will tell the world what it is really like in Namibia. A place that burns slowly, robs and ruins almost lethargically but which ticks along quirkily in front of beautiful backdrops.
Namibia is unique and there is the argument that there was no need to make Katutura feel so much like South Africa or Brazil. However, if you just go with it, you will certainly see ‘Katutura’ as a cause for celebration.
Schott’s direction soars and slows, speeds and stops to create a film that highlights the beauty of a township not so much in a way that glamorises poverty but which adds a fascinating dimension to what one often sees as an eyesore. And though Emvula’s script may be better suited for somewhere else, his interlacing of human stories which connect and curl in on each other is skillful when it is simple despite some distracting red herrings.
As for the cast, from the little to the lead roles, everyone is admirable. Ryno Platt does much without words as Shivago’s gangster offering an odd levity to the back of scenes where Shivago is at his grinning worst and characters like Nancy played playfully by Whilzahn Gelderbloem offer some insight into the township’s toll on teenagers.
The consistent scene stealers, however, are Muller, Uzera and Emvula. Though Muller and Tjuna Kauapirura’s capably realised Foibe suffer due to one dimensionality in the spheres of declaring love and weeping respectively, Muller manages to create some real empathy for a promiscuous drug addled mother with a mouth desperately in need of soap.
Her performance of ‘Crying’, a heartrending original song written by Lize Ehlers, produced by Araffath and laid over a mesmerising montage that beautifully breaks into the story in the style of Paul Thomas Anderson, is stunning in all its amateurism. Broken with the cracks of the novice showing quite plainly which render it more authentic of a drug addict with a blossoming dream amidst a lousy life.
Leading the male leads are Uzera and Emvula. Playing disabled, quietly defiant and courageous from the confines of a wheelchair, Uzera captures Kondja in an arresting performance which begs one watch his star. Similarly Emvula stuns as the sinisterly smiling Shivago who is at once humorous and horrifying replete with blond beard and bloodshot eyes.
Tshoopara as Dangi, a former crook trying to get his life back to good, is certainly engaging but there is a tendency to brood below the nose and not do much with the eyes. Immensely watchable, handsome and certainly a striking star, Tshoopara is fast becoming the go-to guy when it comes to a solid local lead.
See ‘Katutura’ when it comes to you because it’s shot shiningly. See it because you will never see Gorengab Dam, single quarters and a leaky shack look so beautiful. See it because it is home grown in the soil of our townships, our traumas and our travails. As little, as large and as loud as they are.
Keep checking ‘Katutura’s’ Facebook page for details on future public screenings.
