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Life, Above All (2010)

Director: Oliver Schmitz

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From Time Out London

In 1988, Oliver Schmitz made ‘Mapantsula’, one of the great Apartheid-era South African films, and with this adaptation of the 2004 novel ‘Chanda’s Secrets’, he unflinchingly explores life in modern Johannesburg for one girl whose family life in an impoverished township is in freefall. Chanda (the terrific Khomotso Manyaka) is just 12 years old and yet shoulders endless responsibilities as her mother, Lillian (Lerato Mvelase), is sick and her stepfather, Jonah (Aubrey Poolo), is a drunk. Illness claims the life of her baby sister, and elsewhere there are tensions between Chanda and her friend Esther (Keaobaka Makanyane), another child discovering the realities of the adult world all too soon.

‘Life, Above All’ is an inside-out portrait of a particular world, whose brutal, dark and unforgiving qualities are reflected in the film’s scrubbed-away colours and shadowy interiors. There’s an anger at the film’s heart towards not only the hardships suffered by Chanda but also the reaction of her community, which proves itself to be curtain-twitching, gossipy and in denial in the face of its own destruction.

Author: Dave Calhoun

Time Out London Issue 2127: May 26 – June 3, 2011

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User reviews of this film

Paul Murphy said...

Posted on May 29 2011 19:15 This outstanding, extemely rmoving film is full of power and anger rather than misery as Chanda takes on the forces of superstition so cynically exploited by Thabo Mbeki in a post-apartheid SA still split into the haves and have-nothings. Even better than Mapantsula it is my film of the year so far and will be hard to dislodge from my memory. Not only that, it's one of the finest ever films about AIDS and can be put to good educational use.
If anyone from the Curzon chain reads this, please fgive it a full run, rather than criminally relegating it to 2 afternoon weekend showings.

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Guy Lodge said...

Posted on May 27 2011 12:52 In full agreement with you on this one, but I must point out that the film is not set in Johannesburg, but in Elandsdoorn, a rural township in the province of Mpumalanga -- a substantially different locale.

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