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South Afircan Town Holds First LGBT Film Festival – Will it Thwart Cultural Intolerance?

Melanie Nathan – 7-27-2010.  Port Elizabeth, a small magnificent seaside resort in the Eastern Cape (Ciskei) Area of South Africa,  has celebrated its long overdue gay and lesbian film festival. The ‘Port Elizabeth Gay and Lesbian Film Festival’ saw visitors come from different parts of South Africa to see the selection of lesbian, transgender and gay films that were carefully selected reports ” Frank Malaba from http://www.rnw.nl/africa/article/port-elizabeth-celebrates-gay-and-lesbian-rights

“We wanted to pick films that would appeal to the broader lesbian, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender’ (LGBT) community. One of the films of interest to the audiences might be a lesbian film called ‘I can’t think straight’ set in the Middle East. It will be a great film because South Africa is a multicultural society and this film explores the elements of diversity”, said a spokesperson for the event.

Apparently transport to the event has caused attendance problems as is often the problem for any event held far from the target audience, in this case the local surrounding townships , now perceived as suburbs, but once considered the nucleus for The Group Areas Act, which separated people of different racial classifications.  However such an event may attract unwanted violence if actually held in a township where gays and lesbians tend to be ostracized through cultural beliefs.

Port Elizabeth is a beautiful seaside resort town, renowned for its surf and pure sandy coastline.  It serves as a stop along the famous “Blue Train” Garden Route to Cape Town.  Having lived there for 13 years of my childhood I remember the “Windy City,” with much fondness, as well as the suffering of the township people.

It is truly sad to me that the people once victimized by the Afrikaner apartheid government now victimizes a minority, – who happen to have a sexual orientation that goes against the cultural Xhosa grain.

While I believe the festival may open eyes serve the community on an educational level, I would hope that the chosen will speak to these differences. That in fact they would inform those with misgivings about LGBT people and rights.

People who happened to walk past the venue did seem to be interested, although the entrance was free or by donation, most of them were too shy to walk through the doors, says the Malaba. An undertone of uneasiness reigned in the local area.  I would suggest, that they were fearful rather than simply shy.

South Africa has taken bold steps in the recognition of gay rights, becoming the only country in Africa to legalize gay marriage in 2006, and to include sexual orientation in its Bill of Rights.  However, very little has been done to enforce hate crimes against lesbians who have been the subject of endemic rape attacks coined there as “corrective rape occurring most often in the Townships.”

The PE GLFF is a much needed tool in the education about gay and lesbian rights in Port Elizabeth and hats off to them for making this bold statement, whichever way it turns out.

“Jolly Good Show- as we would have said way back when!”

Port Elizabeth was named Algoa Bay, when the 1822 British Settlers landed and formed a Colony.  The Area is now referred to as Nelson Mandela Bay – as this is the area where Madiba Mandela, a Xhosa, was from.

Note: Picture depicts the Beach known at a time when it was “whites only”

By Melanie Nathan
nathan@privatecourts.com
@oblogdeeoblogda
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