A documentary which takes place in the
Highlands of South Africa and which is an observation of two young
brothers and two teenage girls. It is an inhospitable place to live
and it is winter. But again we have impressive images of a geographic
and a human landscape. The female leader of this community pleads for
progress and for education of the young people. Beside this we still
see traditional rituals like initiation rites for young men, in this
film the elder brother.
And we can almost feel the freezing air
of this winterly mountain landscape.
The film remains a fragmented look to
this piece of world. But suddenly we see glimpses of beauty.
Two teenage girls try to maintain their
friendship when one of them goes to another school. Like in the
finest film by German documentary filmmaker, we always feel that the
protagonists know that they are filmed. As we are making our
image of them, they seem to react in establishing their own image of
themselves.
The film this observation of certain
people in certain situations caused by the environment they have to
live in comes close to Wim Wenders´s ideal defined in his film
Tokyo-Ga” to film without the pressure to have to proof something”.
In Rainer Gansera´s film on André Bazin, Eric Rohmer says, that the
things we see in a film have to unfold and speak for themselves. In
the case of Coming Of Age, we do not see a film which is beautiful
made but a film where beauty arises in front of our eyes.
The distance, reduction and even
discretion can be in cinema often an overblown attitude. In Coming Of
Age the people, the landscape and the things unfold themselves in a
natural way. The camera and the whole apparatus of cinema seem to
have only one purpose the encourage this self unfolding of the things
happening in front of the camera. And such a distant discreet
attitude does not exclude a certain tenderness.
The shy smile of these girls who know
that they are filmed, stays in my memory. The separation of this two
girls, the 15 years old boy who can´t go to school because he has to
bring the flock of sheep through the winter – are elements, small
hints for a drama which will develop further in our imagination.
Coming Of Age reminds me in another kind than Nikolaus Geyrhalter´s
wonderful Über die Jahre (Over The Years, Forum) in the finest film
by one of Germany´s greatest documentary film maker Peter Nestler.
What makes the joy to watch this film
even greater (especially during a film festival) is the simple and
undoubtedly fact that the most sophisticated and most cinephile
audience of the Berlin Film festival you find exclusively and only
during screenings of the Children-and youth films.
Rüdiger Tomczak
screenings:
Sat, Feb 14, Zoo-Palast 12.30
Sun, Feb15,Cinemaxx 1 14.30
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