Grasping nettles - an interview with Jill Kruger

Jill Kruger could be described as an activist with a camera. A documentary film producer, one of her recent projects about the wedding of two black men, according to a critic, grasps "almost every political and social nettle you can imagine and turns them into a bridal bouquet."

She's currently the Deputy-Director of the Centre for HIV/AIDS Networking (HIVAN) at the University of Natal in Durban, and is drawing from her work at the Centre for a new documentary on the "myths that people harbour about the transmission and development of AIDS. There are myths perpetuated by individuals, and then by communities and also regionally." While the documentary is still in the planning stage, it is one of a number of film projects under way.

"It all started when I was the only woman of the Executive Committee of the Institute of Race Relations and I enquired as to what was to be done about the street-children. From that, the street-children somehow became my responsibility. It wasn't deliberate, it just happened," says Kruger. "That's how the first documentary came about in 2000. I'd been asked to direct a South African project monitoring children in squatter camps in Johannesburg's inner city. I'd always been interested in children's issues, which is why I'd studied anthropology in my forties."

"When the children in the inner cities were forcibly removed and their previous shacks bulldozed, they were taken 55 kilometres outside Johannesburg to the place now called 'Thula Umtwana'," says Kruger. "Just six months before that, I'd made a video of the children putting across their views about their plight in the city to the mayor. I became aware of what a powerful medium film is. That is when I approached the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) about doing a longer documentary on the children."

The documentary was called Thula Umtwana and was translated into Spanish and French, with parts of it being screened by the BBC. Kruger and her director, Shaun Cameron, then made an editor's and producer's cut of the programme, giving the children of Thula Umtwana a chance to tell their own stories. This shorter version was called The Beauty is Coming, a title decided on by the children themselves, who also wrote what they wanted to say in the documentary.

According to Brent Quinn, a producer and former chair of the South African Scriptwriters' Association (SASWA), who reviewed The Beauty is Coming on SABC's "Special Assignment", "...this is not merely reportage, it is film-making of the highest standard ... Works like these go such a long way in destigmatising perceptions of 'squatter camp' life and bring dignity to us all."

The documentary screening resulted in a flood of offers of help from around the country. Many schoolchildren were moved to do projects on squatter camps and to offer whatever help they could. Kruger is now doing developing a new project out the reactions of the children: a series of books that will be created by children for children, written in English, Zulu and Sotho.

Kruger's next documentary, My Son, the Bride, dealt with a completely different issue. She was approached by Mpumi Njinge, a Wits graduate in Film and Still Photography. Njinge had already made one documentary, Everything Must Come Out, which was about lesbian sangomas. He had a story to tell about a homosexual couple who wanted to marry in a town where their families and community refused to accept their way of life.

"I took Mpumi to the SASWA training sessions that we were holding at the time," says Kruger. "Mpumi pitched the story of Hompi - one of a gay couple - to Richard Green of M-Net and Bongi Selane, M-Net's commissioning editor. They accepted the idea into their "New Directors" project. From then on I was determined to let Mpumi's version come through. He filmed 22 hours of footage. After we'd finished the off-line edit, I told him to go home, lie on his bed, and imagine the story evolving on television. When he came back, he had a very clear idea of what he wanted. Then he got tired and said we should just finish the film when the couple enter the church to get married. I said we had to show the actual wedding itself. Hongi himself was passionate about the wedding march. On the day of the wedding, the sound equipment didn't do justice to the march, but we resuscitated it for the film. We showed the whole wedding, so Hompi had his wedding march after all."

Njinge wasn't able to be at the first screening of his documentary at the "Out in Africa" Film Festival. He phoned Kruger to ask her to make the pre-screening address on his behalf. It was then that he told her that he was HIV-positive. Kruger's eyes fill with tears as she remembers trying to present the film without being able to say why the director couldn't be there. Njinge died shortly afterwards. He never saw My Son, the Bride screened.

This film has just been selected for consideration by jury viewing for the Dijbril Diop Mambety Award. If it wins, it will go to the Cannes Film Festival.

Kruger's most recent film, Property of the State, has recently been screened by SABC 3's "Special Assignment". It deals with the experience of gay conscripts in the Defence Force under the apartheid government. It is groundbreaking in that it shows abuses of human rights that had previously gone unnoticed.

"Nodi Murphy from 'Out in Africa' knew me from My Son, the Bride. She asked me whether I could assist Gerald Kraak in making his documentary about gays in the military. Gerald had been a conscientious objector in the Eighties, and had been working on this project for 10 years," says Kruger. "He wanted to recreate the scenes in the army in a stylised way. We enlisted Shaun Cameron to help us re-enact those sequences. The whole team worked together for nearly five months and we did intensive scriptwriting. Gerald had a very definite idea of what he wanted and I think we all worked together well."

Although Property of the State was cut to 22 minutes for "Special Assignment", it produced powerful and interesting reactions. One man wrote: "This was a real eye-opener considering that dark-skinned people like myself were exempt from conscription ... in this instance, apartheid protected me and my family from this particular evil."

But the flood of reaction - including hate-mail from members of the military - just serves to strengthen Kruger's resolve to tell stories many don't want to hear.

To read the April/May Editorial, written by Jill Kruger, please click on the link on the righthand side of this page