The birth of film in the maker: A selfie of my introduction to cinema

This reflexive article examines how identity is informed by the personal, the political and the practice of filmmaking. As a South African filmmaker of mixed heritage (classified as ‘coloured’ under the Apartheid-era code), I recall a childhood of cinema, of cinematic moments, of screen heroes and of sociocultural traditions (imported, imposed and Indigenous) that shaped our ideas and expressions of masculinity as boys and men. Constant in this reflection is how spatial Apartheid (as effected through the Group Areas Act of 1950) impacted Black life in all its manifestations, but particularly the ways it determined how we lived and engaged with cinema in these designated and tightly controlled spaces. The fact that we could find resonance with films narratives, by interpreting them into our own lingo and bribing the screen icons into our realities gave us a window to reimagine our reality.