ABSTRACT
This chapter examines contemporary South African film drawing on two apparently contradictory concepts; first, what political scientist Colin Crouch has termed "post-democracy", and second, "democracy-to-come", developed by Jacques Derrida, but adapted to the South African context by Herman Wasserman. In 2014 South Africa celebrated the twentieth anniversary of its first democratic elections. In her study of post-apartheid cinema, Lucia Saks examines the possibility of an "independent cinema" of autonomous filmmaking in post-apartheid South Africa, "one that is more critical, independent, and experimental, but still more organic to place, time, and people than one envisaged by the state". One can see this "double articulation" in the following brief exercise drawn from the Durban International Film Festival (DIFF), the biggest in South Africa, which compares the opening film with the winner for Best South African Feature. Necktie Youth presents a range of disparities: between rich and poor, past and present, young and old.
