Browsing by Author "Modisane, Litheko"

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    Bollywood and Colourism: Exploring the discourse of Blackness in Hindustani cinema
    (2023) Goolamally, Saadiya; Modisane, Litheko
    This research paper explores the discourse of blackness with a focus on skin colour in Hindustani cinema. It undertakes a gendered analysis of the representation of skin colour. While this research paper maps the historical background of Colourism in Hindustani cinema which is rooted in Casteism, it also documents and analyses the use of the colour line in the representation of vice and virtue. Eventually, it looks into casting patterns of Hindi film directors with skin colour as a determining factor informing narratives, shaping ideological codes, dictating beauty ideals and perpetuating cinematic dogmas. It also investigates the link between Colourism and race through an exploration of the representation of Afro-identities strongly rooted into mimicry within the microcosmic cultural sphere of Hindustani cinema. Finally, it contends that the representation of the colour line has undergone an aestheticization as a result of the gentrification of Hindustani cinema for the purpose of transnational negotiations. Therefore, I posit my contention within the inextricable dynamics of Colourism, Afro-pessimism and ‘black face' mimicry to proclaim that the colouristic and broadly racist agenda within the discourse of the colour line in Hindustani cinema still persists in Bollywood cinema as the gentrification of Hindustani cinema has generated solely a superficial change.
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    Examining personal memory in film: A reflection of documenting memory-stories in Reimagining Memories
    (2023) Mathafeng, Refiloe; Modisane, Litheko
    My film, Reimagining Memories, explores my grandmother's childhood. Some of her most cherished memories are her trips between Lesotho and Cape Town and the time she would spend in the city. With clarity, attachment and a sense of longing, she often never misses an opportunity to reminisce about her travels. She longingly talks about her train trips from Gugulethu to Cape Town CBD, the beach and the home she shared with her brothers and sisters. These are the stories I grew up hearing, and when she was diagnosed with dementia in 2019, these memories stayed with her the most. At its core, Reimagining Memories interrogates space, remembering and the storytelling aspect of orality that has allowed my grandmother's memory-stories to exist inter-generationally. The concept of orality is integral to the film and is what inspired its making. Based on stories of her childhood that I heard growing up, my film visually reimagines what my grandmother's childhood between two worlds would have looked like had she had access to technologies that would allow her to document them. Instead, it is through telling that her memory-stories have been preserved and transmitted down generations. Based on the film, this mini-thesis examines the representation of personal memory using cinematic language and the documentary genre. It utilizes three conventions of documentary, namely testament (interviews), archive and experimentation, to reimagine my grandmother's memory stories while simultaneously interrogating what it means to remember Cape Town in the 1950s during a time of political unrest, with great fondness. In conjunction with my film, this mini-thesis highlights the selectiveness and subjectivity ingrained in the process of an individual's act of remembering. In documenting these stories, the film itself becomes a memory – performing new meanings and alternative ways of engaging with orality, questions of memory and remembering.
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    Examining personal memory in film: A reflection of documenting memory-stories in Reimagining Memories
    (2023) Mathafeng, Refiloe; Modisane, Litheko
    My film, Reimagining Memories, explores my grandmother's childhood. Some of her most cherished memories are her trips between Lesotho and Cape Town and the time she would spend in the city. With clarity, attachment and a sense of longing, she often never misses an opportunity to reminisce about her travels. She longingly talks about her train trips from Gugulethu to Cape Town CBD, the beach and the home she shared with her brothers and sisters. These are the stories I grew up hearing, and when she was diagnosed with dementia in 2019, these memories stayed with her the most. At its core, Reimagining Memories interrogates space, remembering and the storytelling aspect of orality that has allowed my grandmother's memory-stories to exist inter-generationally. The concept of orality is integral to the film and is what inspired its making. Based on stories of her childhood that I heard growing up, my film visually reimagines what my grandmother's childhood between two worlds would have looked like had she had access to technologies that would allow her to document them. Instead, it is through telling that her memory-stories have been preserved and transmitted down generations. Based on the film, this mini-thesis examines the representation of personal memory using cinematic language and the documentary genre. It utilizes three conventions of documentary, namely testament (interviews), archive and experimentation, to reimagine my grandmother's memory stories while simultaneously interrogating what it means to remember Cape Town in the 1950s during a time of political unrest, with great fondness. In conjunction with my film, this mini-thesis highlights the selectiveness and subjectivity ingrained in the process of an individual's act of remembering. In documenting these stories, the film itself becomes a memory – performing new meanings and alternative ways of engaging with orality, questions of memory and remembering.
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    Examining personal memory in film: A reflection of documenting memory-stories in Reimagining Memories
    (2023) Mathafeng, Refiloe; Modisane, Litheko
    Background Treatment-limiting severe cutaneous adverse reactions (SCAR) occur more commonly amongst persons co-infected with tuberculosis (TB) and advanced HIV. The impact of SCAR on long-term HIV and TB outcomes is unknown. Methods Patients with active TB and/or HIV admitted to Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa with SCAR between 1/10/2018 and 30/09/2021 were eligible. Clinical and laboratory follow-up data was collected for 6 and 12-month outcomes: mortality, TB and antiretroviral therapy (ART) regimen changes, TB treatment completion, and CD4 count recovery. Results Forty-eight SCAR admissions included: 34, 11, and 3 HIV-associated TB, HIV-only and TB-only patients with 32, 13 and 3 cases of drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms, StevensJohnson syndrome/toxic epidermal necrolysis and generalised bullous fixed drug eruption respectively. Nine (19%), all HIV-positive, were deceased at 12-months, and 12 (25%) were lost to all care levels. Amongst TB-SCAR patients, seven (21%) were discharged on all four first-line anti-TB drugs (FLTD), while 12 (33%) had discharge regimens with no FLTDs; 24/37 (65%) completed TB treatment. Amongst HIV-SCAR patients, 10/31 (32%) changed ART regimen. If retained in care (24/36), median (IQR) CD4 counts increased by 12-months post-SCAR (115 (62-175) vs. 319 (134-439) cells/uL). Conclusion SCAR admission amongst patients with HIV-associated TB results in substantial mortality, and considerable treatment complexity. However, if retained in care, TB regimens are successfully completed, and immune recovery is good despite SCAR.
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    Mediating identity through orality in West African films adapted from literature
    (2023) Chibogu, Kenechukwu; Modisane, Litheko
    This work critically examines the complexity of the ways by which filmmakers are mediating oral tradition forms as secondary orality in West African Films. The study aims to show that filmmakers mediate orality as an aesthetic source. The goal is to examine the value of the oral narrative on the screen. To study the oral qualities of the literature in the audio-visual primarily because of its aesthetic and stylistic feature in the narrative by interrogating the oral aestheticsin African films. To analyze the mediation of oral tradition in films, I combine orality theory, adaptation theory, and postcolonial theory to develop a model that treats film theoretically as ‘secondary orality adaptation (SOA)', which is interpreted using textual analysis in films such as Xala (1975), Karmen Gei (2001) and Invasion 1897 (2014). In the process, the study has explicitly engaged the aesthetic value of ‘orality' within the ambit of film studies thatrecognizes its wide reach and filmmakers' mediation and agency in the construction of identityusing the audio-visual method. The study finds that each mediation process involving oral tradition forms in West African films adapted from literature adds to the understanding of howfilm functions as a secondary orality adaptation. Whereas some filmmakers endorse cultural practices, others promote protest and contestation metaphorically using filmic codes (aural narratives) that are understandable to audiences and employ language as orality to construct identity in contemporary African postcolonial societies.
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    The Question of Genre Classification in the Drama Series “Ubizo: The Calling (2007)”
    (2022) Mjoli, Zingisa Noluvuyo; Modisane, Litheko
    The paper argues that the South African television series, Ubizo: The Calling (d/Krijay Govender, 2007) blends elements of psychological thrillers, horrors as well as the gothic genre. The relationship of these subgenres is discussed in this paper in the context of the African spiritual practice of divine calling that is narrated by the series. The paper concludes that genre classification in this series is left unclear, whether it is horror or psychological thriller as suggested by its producers. For most parts of the series, horror conventions can be identified from the way the characters are set to the types of props and iconographies, as well as the set design and shot sizes of most scenes. Towards the end of the series, however, it changes focus thematically to fit a category that cannot be confined to one genre type. The effort of this research is to present concerns about the way in which some African spiritual practices are likened to sorcery due to the obsession with madness and ghosts. I used Indigenous Knowledge Systems together with genre analysis to arrive at my findings which were important in shedding light to the fact that some genres become less effective when they have been ideologically moved to other cultures. Upon on embarking on this research, I wanted to arrive at the certainty that western borrowed genres were bastardising African practices using foreign jargon and visuality to depict African spirituality. Indeed, the research was constructed in a manner that it simply wanted to confirm something that I, the author desperately wanted to believe. However, my own work has challenged me to acknowledge that these two can coexist.