The Wynberg 7: An Intolerable Amnesia’ and ‘An Impossible Return’

On the 29th of October Dr Siona O’Connell’s films ‘Impossible Return’ and ‘Wynberg 7′ will be premiered at the Baxter Theatre at 19h00 – this premier is free and all are welcome. 

An Impossible Return investigates meanings imbued in several areas in Cape Town that were subject to forced removals during apartheid. Specifically, the project examines three crucial moments: the forging of lives of humanness, the receipt of the eviction notice, and the eviction itself. These moments are important in the larger understandings of injury and memory, and this visual and oral archive allows for new understandings of justice and freedom after oppression.

Taking a series of photographs by artist David Brown as a starting point, the project will open a set of questions around trauma, memory and freedom in the aftermath of oppression. Intimate documents of family life, the photographs speak of the destruction of community and of the multiple valencies of place and home. It is here that the project will draw attention to the lived experiences of ‘black’ families, and the self- and re-representation of ‘black’ bodies as human.This project speaks of catastrophe and of the unfinished business of apartheid. Approaching the notion of archive as being open-ended and not bound in time and space, the project will suggest a set of debates that lie at the centre of post-apartheid society, even as they are generally disavowed.

See a promotional video for the project here.

The Wynberg 7: An Intolerable Amnesia was directed and produced by Dr Siona O’Connell of the Centre for Curating the Archive at UCT.

The Wynberg 7: An Intolerable Amnesia is a 26 minute documentary that considers apartheid afterlives. Viewed through the lens of anti-apartheid youth struggles of Cape Town, the documentary examines the role played by a group of high school students who were arrested 30 years ago, charged and later imprisoned at Pollsmoor Prison. Find out more about The Wynberg 7: An Intolerable Amnesia in the following newspaper articles:CapeTowner article Tatler article Part 1 and Tatler article Part 2