|
|
|
|
 |
|||
|
|
||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
| ||||||||||||
|
| Amandla! When I met first-time documentarian Lee
Hirsch in Kansas City last October, he looked a bit tired. He had not slept in
nearly 48 hours. This temporary sleep deprivation was nothing compared to the
decade he had devoted to making Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony,
a detailed look at how music helped bring down Apartheid in South Africa. It
features commentary and tunes from musicians as diverse as jazz pianist Abdullah
Ibrahim, trumpeter Hugh Masekela and singers Miriam Makeba and Vusi Mahlasela.
It even includes Apartheid-era propaganda clips and American news footage
narrated by Walter Cronkite. Later in the evening when Hirsch was presenting
the movie to a packed crowd at FilmFest KC, he showed no signs of exhaustion or
any hint of wavering enthusiasm for the movement that inspired his film. He
greeted the crowd with a boisterous "Amandla!," which means
"power" in the Zulu language. When the audience was supposed to reply
with the words for "to the
people", Hirsch gently chided them for their lack of enthusiasm until their
response to his call was sufficiently loud. Even if Hirsch hadn't come to personally
support the film, his passion for the music and culture of South Africa runs
through every frame. As a result, he won the Audience Award for Documentary and
the Freedom of Expression Award at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. Now thirty,
Hirsch looked at my Abudullah Ibrahim CD and told me the tune African Market
"rocks!" as if he were still in his teens. His eagerness is
accompanied by a detailed knowledge of the region and its history. With all that
he has done, there is a sense that his efforts and the revolution he covers will
continue. Dan Lybarger: One
of the most astonishing things about this film is that you started on it when
you were nineteen. What made you explore this topic? I understand you met
somebody from South Africa. Lee Hirsch:
I was picked on a lot when I was a kid, so I had a sort of empathy. I was an
activist [pauses]. I am an activist, so for me at the time of my formative years
South Africa became my central cause, what I really worked on. I led a
divestment campaign. I realized very quickly that I’d need to know a whole lot
more than I knew. I had a sort of peripheral right and wrong sense of South
Africa. To argue with CEOs and corporate executives, you really have to know
what you’re talking about. So the deeper I got and the more passionate I
became, the more the music started creeping in different ways. I started hearing
it and feeling connected to it more, of course, not being able to get more
because it wasn’t available. It was what it was. And being taken by it. By
staying focused to the music, the more I heard. I started learning some of the
songs. I did meet a young South African my age who’d
been exiled and tortured in prison. He taught me some songs, and that was really
powerful for me. And then it kind of lay dormant for a few years after Mandela
got out of prison. Everyone sort of shifted their energies to other things, and
the ANC [African National Congress] were doing their own thing.
It started by being in the anti-Apartheid movement and being drawn to the
music I’d been hearing. It was always there. You watch any news report
from the '80s. In the footage, beneath the reporter’s voice, was the music. DL: Were
you surprised that music was such an integral part of the Anti-Apartheid
movement? LH: I
sort of knew that it was. I saw it and felt it. Something in me picked up on
that. I don’t know what; I don’t know why. I clued into that. I would go and talk to people, and they’d go
“What are you talking about?” Black South Africans would go, “Oh, sh*t.
Yeah, you’re right. We never stopped to think about it. We never paused. It
was something that was just part and parcel of who we are and the way we express
ourselves. ” So naturally it was part of the struggle. No one had time to stop
and take pause and take stock of the fact that this is a phenomenon. In a way, I had this amazing thing about being
this outsider who came in, who saw something extraordinary in something people
saw as everyday. My whole stint in South Africa was marked by
that kind of perspective that I had. I’d spent a couple of years directing
music videos there and was very lucky and became the number one guy for a while.
The reason why my videos were appealing to people was for the same reason.
Within black culture, I was seeing things to celebrate that other people took
for granted. I mixed that with a sort of American sensibility and hip-hop. They
didn’t have MTV back then. The only videos they really saw were like
multimillion dollar hip-hop videos occasionally, and these crap
crap local music videos where the band
would be playing, and there’d be a bunch of topless women wearing these Zulu
skirts in front of a mine dump dancing. And that’s what it was. That was a
music video back then. We really switched that out and started doing some
sophisticated stuff. Again people were psyched at the way we were
seeing them, showing their culture on film in this fresh way that celebrated
what was already there. They might not have noticed, but I noticed. DL: I’m
still haunted by the story of Vuyisile Mini singing on his way to the gallows.
Were you actually there to photograph the exhumation of his body? LH: I was. That’s all our
footage. I actually helped work
with the family to have the whole thing happen. I feel really proud of that part
of the film. At one point we were going to have this massive rally to celebrate
Mini. It ended up being a beautiful ceremony as it was, which I didn’t
organize. It’s better that way because I’m a documentary filmmaker. If you
start making those things, you start to blur the lines. DL: You
start to get into Leni Riefenstahl territory. LH: That’s
interesting territory [food service comes in]. I haven’t had anything to eat
since 4 a.m. Will you forgive me? DL: When
you were doing the interview segments, when did you do most of those LH: Our
first review that we ever got, the reviewer hated the film, and he wrote, “No
matter how many times Hirsch swings his camera around, it’s still just talking
heads.” We did those in 1999 and 2000. We had a solid four-week shoot when we
did all the interviews. Not all of them, just those polished ones. We assessed
what holes we had about a week and a half or a month later and did some pick up
interviews. Miriam Makeba hadn’t agreed to do the film when we had the main
shoot, and then she agreed to be in the film later. DL: Was
it tough to get their trust? LH: This
is the thing. I was there for so long, and over the nine years, a lot of the
people in the film became my friends. And people saw me struggling to make the
film. I was broke. I was bumming money off my friends so I could eat. People
knew the passion and commitment I had and by the time I showed up with a crew, a
track and a dolly, it made a big difference. They already had a comfort level with, “Oh
this is an American, and he’s just coming in.” I was practically South
African at that point. The fact that the film took so long is both a blessing
and a curse. The curse is that it nearly drove me mad. It was really hard to be
focused and obsessed with one thing for ten years. It was crazy, and people
thought I was nuts. I went through some really hard times. The positive is that
there was an intimacy and a comfort. Trust is a big thing. People really trusted
me and put faith in me to tell this story.
They didn’t have to. DL: Even
the white former riot police seemed comfortable with you. LH: That was the gift of alcohol. It’s very helpful sometimes. DL: The
former executioner seemed at ease with you, too. LH: He
was a very interesting character in the film, huh? Scary. DL: He
reminded me of Fred Leuchter Jr. in Errol Morris’ Mr.
Death. LH: [Morris]
and I went to the same high school in Vermont, a progressive boarding school. A
lot of artists come out of there. We were lucky to get to go there. DL: Your
executioner is much more matter of fact about his job, whereas Leuchter is
giddy. Your guy isn’t giddy. LH: No, he’s not. He really wanted to do that interview. He drove four hours to do that interview. He wanted to talk. He wanted to tell his story. It was amazing because when we had our gala premiere in South Africa, some had debated whether to invite him for a long time. We didn’t invite the riot police. But I decided to invite him. And he came to this film with a very different spirit. He did what he did, but there was an honesty in his confession. I think his interview is like a confession. He came to the premiere, and he was like the
first guy to show up. As his scene came on, I got really worried. I was like,
“Did we do the right thing by having him here?” Because there’s a room of
like 400 comrades. So his scene played, and when the movie was
over, there was this party afterwards. We were getting down. I kept seeing
people coming up to him and hugging him. Black South Africans. Hugging him. And
then he came over and thanked us for having him. He was having this incredible
experience. Women, girls were just getting down with him on the dance floor. For
me, there’s no better evidence of the kind of reconciliation and the spirit of
reconciliation in South Africa than that moment. It tells so much. The interview was really chilling because it
was in the prison. That whole scene with those prisoners dancing and stomping,
that was what was literally happening while the interview was going on. That was
like, “What’s that music?” We turned to the warden, who was closely
supervising everything, and we stopped the interview and shot them. It was
amazing. DL: What’s
amazing about that African National Congress theme (Nkosi Sikel’i Africa)
that you played in the film is that it doesn’t have any images of war or
antagonism like the Star Spangled Banner or
the Marseillaise do. LH: It
was composed by a guy named Enoch Sontanga in the early 1900s, it’s a
beautiful song. Although some of the songs in the later years did [have violent
themes]. But by the lyrics having that confrontational edge, even though the
lyrics were violent, the fact that they were violent allowed the people to be
nonviolent. By pretending I’m an MK [the militant wing of the ANC] soldier and
singing songs, I’m expressing it as like performance art. I’m expressing it
even though I’m not doing it. Not to say that everyone was peaceful and
innocent because there was a lot of violence in the struggle. A lot of people
think that it was a totally nonviolent struggle, and that’s bullsh*t. There
was violence. People died. DL: Yes,
because you had told me earlier that you were there during the Winnie Mandela
hearings. LH: Case
in point. DL: It’s
interesting that she’s reviled, and that her former husband, Nelson Mandela,
is revered. LH: Rightfully
so. He does deserve it. He laid the ground, didn’t he? It’s nice to be
celebrated, and he’s still with us. DL: Even
though South Africa has terrible problems with AIDS and economic woes and the
trade union issues, the transition between Apartheid and the current government
could have been much worse. LH: Totally.
Like when Duma says, “I thought our young men were running straight into the
sea. Whites would wake up and shoot everybody dead. We were going somewhere, but
where we didn’t know.” Even in 1992. Even in '94, a week before the
election, everybody thought the country was going to f*cking explode. To be
there and see it go down, it was like a miracle. I almost died in a bombing two days before the
election. I was on my way to a meeting in the ANC national headquarters. I was
late. Had I been on time, I would have been parking right where the bomb went
off. DL: There’s
something hidden in this music that’s really fascinating. With Meadowlands,
you have this cheery melody, and when you actually bother to analyze the lyrics,
it’s creepy. LH: I
don’t think that’s what the song means. I think she was giving a metaphor. I
think Meadowlands, makes a statement
about [government-forced] removal and not moving. I don’t think it says like
[Sophie McGina and Dolly Rathebe] said, “I’ll shoot you. I’ll kill you.”
That was just an example of how the songs can be like that. But, yeah, there are a lot of coded messages in
the songs. Like slave songs. Hugh Masekela actually did something in his
interview about how “When the sun sets, we’re going to plant the seed. And
when the sun sets, we’re going to catch the Underground Railroad.” That kind
of thing. It’s all coded. There was a lot of that in the resistance music. It
also got out the message. It told people who the leader is, what the message is,
what the program is, what this month’s plan is. It all came through the music. DL: It
was able to reach people in a way banners or protest journals couldn’t. LH: There
weren’t protest journals. That was a luxury the struggle didn’t have. It all
came through the music, and the same one melody could be recycled and switched
and changed 200 times with the lyrics just changing, updating and refreshing.
It’s amazing, and suddenly everybody knows when they’re singing that new
version across the country. DL: In
the editing, you were able to show the thematic development by overlapping some
tunes. The songs fit even thought they were recorded separately. LH: I
knew people had this just amazing tonal ability where it would match in pitch
and tempo. Where possible, I tried to get as many people as possible to sing the
same song as I could knowing that I would try this kind of circular singing in
the editing room. We had a lot more of an interesting fit into the structure. DL: What
will you be doing with the soundtrack album? LH: We just mastered the soundtrack. Did you know we did this with Dave Matthews? DL: No,
tell me about it. LH: His
company, ATO Records, is putting out the soundtrack. You can buy it right now at
ATORecords.com. “According to Our.” It’s being funneled with the new David
Gray release. It’s twenty-nine tracks of music. It’s awesome. It’s so
rich, and some of this stuff is not in the film. It’s some bonus stuff, some
surprises. I’ve got hundreds of hours of music that isn’t in the movie, so
look out for more stuff. We’re doing a second album. It’s an
“inspired by” album, so it’s Dave Matthews, myself and my partner Sherry
Simpson. She’s my producer. She’s an amazing woman. We’re going to be
executive-producing this all-star tribute to the power of song. It’s a charity
album. DL: Last
year I interviewed Argentinean composer Lalo Schifrin, and he was saying that he
was in awe of the way that African music has such complicated rhythms and tempo
shifts. LH: It
amazes me, too. I wish I was a musician. The film’s about music because I
can’t play music. The little I know is southern Africa is vocal. Other parts
are percussive, west Africa particularly or north Africa. In southern Africa,
it’s just vocal. It’s completely rooted in society. It’s everywhere.
People sing when they’re happy or they’re sad. For weddings, funerals or
marriages. The whole cycle of life is marked in songs. It’s only natural that
song would be a bearer of the struggle. Hopefully, it will continue to be there. It’s changed a lot. The culture has shifted a
hundred-fold since 1995, completely moving away from the collective to the
individual kind of expression to hip-hop and western. The resource is in people.
When they need it, they can draw on it. DL: There’s
one absolutely jaw-dropping clip you used to illustrate the passbook period
where a white woman thoroughly goes over her servant’s passbook, and the
narrator makes fun of the poor man’s dental work by announcing that “nothing
missing but one tooth.” LH: It’s
amazing. A new friend of mine, an Afrikaans girl who was working for SABC, was
working on special assignment to cover the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
for South African television. She had found it in her research in the deep
archives, and she smuggled me a copy on Beta of that clip. This is the most
amazing clip. [He later remembers during a roundtable
interview] In about '95, I had seen a lot of footage inside a march. The
journalists are with the protesters, or their car's on the protester's side of
the line shooting forward. But I hadn't seen anything from the police lines. But
in a lot of the footage, I saw there was always a cameraman working with the
Special Branch who was filming these marches and protests, largely because they
were looking to isolate the ringleaders on video, and also because they were
studying the formation of marches and protests. I was really interested in what
the police had in terms of footage. I tracked down the police and Special Branch
video unit, which was still operating at the time because there was this whole
weird transformation process where a lot of people were kept on or slowly phased
out. It was a really interesting time in all phases of society of South Africa.
Because of the peaceful transition, every sector went through a transition of
its own. So anyway, I met this guy who was with the
video unit, and he agreed to take me to the facility. I sort of played like I
was this dumb American kid -- in fact, I am all that
-- but I was interested in policing, riots. I didn't really tell him
what my politics were or where I was coming from. I ended up in this
multimillion dollar facility in Pretoria, South Africa. It had like four edit
bays. It was better than anything I had ever worked with in my life. They had
this whole propaganda machine set up. It was just before everyone really started
covering their a**es. They were showing me all of this really intense stuff,
like, "Oooo. Let me show you this." And we'd go to a closet and unlock
a door and take out this tape that made me go "Oh, my God! That's some
heavy, heavy sh*t!" When I went back and asked for the footage, they had
destroyed all of it in the wake of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as
evidence. I still kept the name of this guy who was really nice to me, and when
we shot the film, I said, "Here's what I remember from that day, and I'd
really like to try and recreate that." So he helped round up all the
generals and these guys, which I don't think I could have done. They agreed
miraculously to come to this barbecue. The liquor flowed, and this amazing
session, which plays a really strong part in the film presenting what they felt. I did get some footage from the National Film
Archive of South Africa, which was a sort of Apartheid institution, but by the
time I went to them, the woman who was running it was really liberal and she was
open about everything they had. In fact the Walter Cronkite stuff that I got was
from them. They had it as a representation of propaganda from the other side
about Apartheid. And their print was actually better than the one CBS had in New
York, so that's the one that ended up in the film. That "Nothing Missing
but One Tooth" thing that we were just talking about, came from a friend of
mine at the SABC who found it and smuggled me a copy of it. I am now paying
through the teeth for it. DL: How
did you get Dave Matthews involved with the soundtrack? LH: Dave's
South African. I knew that in the back of my mind. The first artist I got turned
on to in South Africa in 1982 was Vusi Mahlasela, the guy who plays guitar in
the film. Vusi had just released his first album, Waiting to Come Back.
Two of the songs on the film are from that album. It's an unbelievable album.
For me, it's like groundbreaking. And I met him, and he because a really good
friend for me. I'd go spend Sundays in his house in this township outside of
Pretoria. This is the guy who is now on his fifth album. Up till a year ago, he
lived in a tin shack. That gives you a little bit of an idea of what South
Africa is like for some people. I was hugely committed to his career because of
all the artists I know, he has the most amazing crossover potential. But his
music could really take off here. Everyone I ever played his music for was
going, "Yeah! He rocks! Burn me that!" Before that even, I was making
tapes, just giving out CDs. Isn't that amazing the whole burning thing? Dave, little did I know, also got into Vusi. At
that point we were all working together, and then Dave pretty much goes to South
Africa every year as a clandestine holiday. He goes and just chills with his
friends and is not a star for a little while. He did a song with Vusi that we
made in the studio we were at that's never been released. So I knew there was
some love. There was like some "Dave Matthews Vusi Love" out there.
We'd been trying to get Vusi signed and we brought Vusi out twice to the States
for a showcase gig. There was a lot of politics involved. Basically when the film was completed and a rough cut was
done days before Sundance, I sent the film to Dave's people at ATO Records. It's
his record label, and they just loved it. I got a call back from him a week
later. "We loved it. Dave loves it. Let's do the deal." They came to
Sundance. We started negotiating, and we closed the deal. That's how it
happened. It's awesome I can't even tell you how great it is. With a documentary film
-- we've been rejected by a lot of festivals -- What if Sundance had rejected us and we didn’t win two
awards? Would this film be stuck in the road somewhere? For me it's always like,
"How lucky we are, but what can we do to bring the profile of this film
up?" I think Dave will reach a lot of people who might not know about this
film otherwise. He's amazing. He's a great link to college aged people and
people in their 20s and early 30s who love and respect him. It'll really help
us. DL: Negotiating
the rights for songs can be very difficult. LH: It
is a pain. We have 100 cues for music in this film that all have to be
documented and approved and licensed for evidence that they're public domain.
It's been an endless task. It's a real quagmire. DL: Have
the musicians who have been exiled been able to return to South Africa? LH: Many haven't. Hugh Maseka said like of the 300,000 people who went into exile, only 20,000 returned. Don't quote me, but it's that kind of a figure. A lot died in exile. Some had lives that forever changed and didn't want to go back. Anyone who wanted to return, could return and went back to where they were before. |
|
|
