A Snake Gives Birth to a Snake
DIFF world première documentary
The gala screening promises
to be one of the highlights of this year’s festival – with some of the
country’s foremost peace mediators joining the director, special guests, and
members of the cast and crew for the world première screening, followed by a Q&A session.
A Snake
Gives Birth to a Snake follows a diverse group of South African actors as they tour global war-torn
regions to share their country's experience of reconciliation. As they ignite
dialogue among people with raw memories of atrocity, the actors find they must
confront once again their homeland's complicated and violent past – and
question their own capacity for healing and forgiveness.
A Snake
Gives Birth to a Snake was edited by
Joel Plotch (In the Company of Men; Nurse Betty; Gone). It was produced by
Jacqueline Bertrand Lessac and Emma Tammi and Executive Produced by Jonathan
Gray, and Robert Lear. It features never-before-heard original
music by jazz legend Hugh Masekela, with lyrics taken from TRC personal
testimonies.
“Can we forgive the past, to survive the future?” This
profound question, posed by Nelson Mandela, become a mandate by which other
nations could live. Lessac wanted to
better understand the subtleties of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, and in so doing, bring the story of the TRC to a wider audience
while exploring the possibility of the TRC
as a concept which could successfully be exported to other post-conflict zones.
In 2001, Lessac returned
to the Colonnades Theatre Laboratory, which he had founded 25 years before in
New York City, to find a way of telling the story of the South African TRC as
theatre’s way of prompting others to drop their masks and tell the truth.
He wanted to look beyond
the presentations of victim and perpetrator and instead examine the role of the
interpreters who translated the TRC proceedings into SA’s 11 official
languages. Lessac was intrigued by the fact
that the interpreters, simultaneously translating in the first person, could
never turn away from atrocity. He was fascinated with what the TRC looked like
through the eyes of people who, for two and a half years, verbalised every
moment of the hearings. He met with
actual TRC interpreters as they relived their stories and memories for the
first time. Their experiences became the starting point for the journey ahead.
In 2003, after
interviewing over 350 actors in SA, Lessac held a three-week workshop with the
core of chosen actors who developed script material out of their own
life-experiences intertwined with the lives of the interpreters.
The theatrical vehicle for these conversations was a
production entitled Truth in Translation,
a hard-edged, multi-award winning theatrical production, with accompanying
workshops, created between 2003 and 2006. It opened in Rwanda and toured to
three continents; 11 countries and 26 cities. It has played to more than
55 000 people and facilitated conflict transformation workshops for more
than 10 000 participants.
The documentary A
Snake Gives Birth to a Snake is the result of this journey – a glimpse
into the lives and minds of a group of South African performers who shared and
listened; facilitated and responded to the heartbreaking real-life personal
stories of the human casualties of global conflict. As South Africans
representing various facets of South African society, they were forced to
look at whether they themselves had even successfully "reconciled"
their own individual pasts, and realised just how complex and challenging it is
to engage with the multifaceted concept of forgiveness.
"For me, this film
pays homage to a very special group of South African actors and interpreters
who were warriors of the most special kind. They allowed themselves to
travel through worlds that were often more painful than their own worst
nightmares,” considers
Lessac.
The documentary’s intriguing
title refers
to a question which often appears in conflict situations when asked why
perpetrators killed young babies. The answer, irrespective of culture is
always, one way or another, “A
Snake Gives Birth to a Snake.”
“The film was originally titled Truth in Translation, just like the play. We changed it to A Snake
Gives Birth to a Snake because no matter how true that might be, when revenge
is celebrated as heroism, it is a poor excuse for killing.”
A Snake Gives Birth to a Snake premieres at the Durban
International Film Festival taking place in venues in and around Durban from 17 - 27 July 2014. The gala screening
is on 20 July at 17:15 in
Suncoast (6)
The original company of actors were: Quanita Adams,
Nick Boraine, Andrew Buckland, Sibulele Gcilitshana, Bongani Gumede, Robert
Koen, Jeroen Kranenburg, Sandile Matsheni, Fana Mokoena, Thembi Mtshali-Jones
and Jenny Stead along with earlier contributors Lionel Newton, Helen Iskander,
Hugh Masebenza, Mmabatho Mogomotsi, Lerato Moloi, Celest Mathews and Paul
Savage.
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