MILISUTHANDO

Composed as an ode to Gabrielle Goliath’s Elegy, ARIA(S) unfolds across three events that create spaces to reflect on violence experienced by women and queer people, their acts of political resistance, and explore grief through ghostly presence. 

Across its five acts, Milisuthando Bongela’s Milisuthando applies indigenous knowledge frameworks to disentangle the narrative inventions of South African apartheid. The film composes an intimate portrait of its director’s idyllic upbringing in the Transkei, an unrecognised Black independent region established by the apartheid regime. Through its depiction of events, both personal and political, from the controversy surrounding the Transkei’s autonomy and Bongela’s integration into the white school system in the 1990s, to her gaining of political consciousness, Milisuthando applies a critical lens to decolonisation.

The first screening of ARIA(S), Milisuthando establishes intimacy as a crucial tool for reckoning with colonial legacies. Through formal experimentation, use of both institutional and personal archival footage and ritual rhythms, Bongela complicates utopic visions, past and present, of a unified ‘rainbow nation’.

Doors open at 2.30pm; event starts at 3pm and ends at 5.30pm.

Image credit: Milisuthando Bongela, MILISUTHANDO (2023).