Milisuthando: Intimacy, Race, and Belonging in Apartheid South Africa
MILISUTHANDO is a deeply intimate portrait of filmmaker, writer and poet Milisuthando Bongela’s youth in South Africa. Born in the Transkei, an unrecognized Black independent region established by the apartheid regime, Bongela was shielded from the overt horrors, violence, or even the presence of white occupiers to her land. Nevertheless, the fall of apartheid ushered in a new life, as her family moved to a mixed area in the 1990s and was forced to grapple for the first time with the violence of racialization. The self-titled documentary explores love, friendship and belonging in a South Africa stratified by racism, proving that only if we understand its tentacles, can we begin to extricate ourselves from its clutches.
Director Milisuthando Bongela will be joined by Professor Amelia Herbert (Urban Studies and Education, Barnard College) to discuss the film after the screening.
Open to BC/CU ID holders only.
SPEAKERS
Milisuthando Bongela-Davis (b.1985, South Africa) is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, cultural worker and artist. Her career began in the fashion industry but the last 16 years have seen her traverse the worlds of music, art, media and film – continually turning towards indigenous knowledge systems. She was Arts Editor for The Mail & Guardian’s Friday section and was host and co-producer of the podcast Umoya: On African Spirituality with Dr. Athambile Masola. Her first film, a personal essay documentary titled MILISUTHANDO had its in competition world premier at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and selected for MoMA’s New Directors / New Films programme 2023 before opening the 2023 Encounters Documentary Film Festival. It was nominated and won awards for its groundbreaking form, subject matter and approach to personal filmmaking. She is an inaugural fellow of the 2020 Adobe Women at Sundance Fellowship and is currently working on her second film, an experimental silent film commissioned by Neo Muyanga and William Kentridge’s Centre for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg.
Amelia Simone Herbert is Assistant Professor of Education and Urban Studies at Barnard College. Her research and teaching draw on anthropology, comparative education, and Black studies to interrogate the roles that education plays in the construction and subversion of racialized urban inequality. Her current book project is an ethnography that examines how youth, families, and educators navigate the racial and spatial politics of aspiration in the increasingly marketized schooling landscape of Cape Town, South Africa. Prior to joining Barnard College, Amelia was a postdoctoral fellow at Rutgers University’s Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice and an instructor in the Department of Urban Education at Rutgers-Newark. She was also Visiting Assistant Professor in Colgate University’s Department of Educational Studies. Her commitment to researching the complex meanings of schooling in lived experiences is fueled by over 15 years of professional experience in K-12 schools. Amelia was a classroom teacher in Newark for nearly a decade and she has also worked as a teacher educator with schools in New York City and Cape Town. Her research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright-Hays Program, the American Association of University Women, and the National Academy of Education/ Spencer Foundation.
ACCESSIBILITY
Registration is strongly encouraged and open to BC/CU ID holders only. You must be affiliated with the university to attend this event. Refreshments will be provided.
We ask attendees at our in-person events to wear masks when they are not speaking or eating. We understand masking as a disability and social justice issue, and we affirm our commitment to collective care, especially in a moment when evidence-based public health practice is under attack. We will provide masks to any who need them.
This event is expected to take place from 4:00 – 7:30 PM.