Cinema
Jannie Totsiens
Jans Rautenbach · 1970
Synopsis
Jannie, a man walled in by catatonic silence, is admitted to a private psychiatric clinic. His silence disturbs the other patients, who at first keep him at a distance: a woman abandoned by her fiancé, a girl raised by bigoted parents, a judge, a former soldier, a mother who writes endlessly to her dead daughter. The director of the establishment, a weak man who drinks, knows little beyond handing out injections and pills. The patients join together to bring the newcomer back to life, and Jannie, once treated, tries to form bonds with them.
Context
The director wrote the screenplay himself, drawing on his practice as a clinical psychologist; the historian Martin Botha notes its borrowing from Jung's archetypes. Critics have read this asylum as an allegory of the whole country under apartheid, following Keyan Tomaselli. Shot in colour, the film brings together Cobus Rossouw in the role of Jannie, Hermien Dommisse, Katinka Heyns and Jill Kirkland, with music by Sam Sklair. It was shown in Nantes, at the Three Continents festival, in 1996.
Who it is for
A 95-minute film in Afrikaans, somewhere between psychiatric confinement, black humour and the fantastic, for those who like auteur cinema.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the country's first avant-garde film, it caused a sensation among intellectuals without finding the general public of its time.
Sources for this page 3
The pages consulted to check this page.