My Peralta Experience.
Crossing borders between the novel and film
by Bettina Corke.
I went to Peralta for the first time in October 2004. to participate
in a creative writing course. I knew one of the tutors and I wanted
to meet new people who might have the same interests in life and living
as I have. (Incidentally, Peralta is all the things that it says it
is in its brochure - beautiful, created out of love and imagination.)
Most of the people attending the course were interested in writing
books. I was the outsider. I work as an experimental film and documentary
person, so I had nothing to show as an example of my writing skills
to the organisers of the course, only film scripts. In 2004, I had
been asked by the editor of the International Alliance of Women Centenary
Celebration Publication to write something about my own and my family's
commitment to feminism. So I took that with me as an example.
" As I write this, I realise that a "three generational family
commitment to feminism" could be written by many other members
of the Alliance.I remember that at one of our meetings, an Alliance
Congress, some other delegates from India, Germany, Sweden, and Africa
told me about their grandmothers' and mothers' deep involvement in
"feminism" and in the "advancement of Women", during the early and
mid- 20th Century.
Remembering that, I modestly submit my thoughts to you about my family's
experiences, not because I feel that my grandmother's and my mother's
experiences were unique. Not at all. They were merely a minute part
of the whole dynamic women's movement moving at that time into the
public sphere of social and political change. Yet, here I begin to
have my doubts. I begin to see that, perhaps, there was an aspect
of uniqueness in how my family's total support of feminism came
about. This uniqueness, call it what you will, came about because
the men as well as the women in my family, past and present, were
and are commited "feminists". They believe now and believed then in
the advancement of women. So much so, that they were and still are
convinced that humanity and the cause of full popular participation
and hence democracy could not, and indeed, will not come about, until
the advancement of women becomes a reality, right throughout society,
in thought, deed and practice.
So, you see I was lucky. It was very easy for me to believe in the
"Cause of Women". I did not have to fight or leave the family to become
a feminist as so many women in so many societies (both in North and
in the South) have to do. My family quietly accepted that feminism
was a dynamic and necessary movement. It was accepted that no political
party was worth the family's support, unless it declared in its manifesto
that it was going to work for "the advancement of women". To achieve
this goal, my family believed that women must be helped to be liberated
from the almost feudal practices of domination and control that men
had over women. Women needed to be liberated from many of the cultural
and traditional religious and non-religious malpractices of the past
(inheritance, marriage rights, property, the custody of children,
sexual discrimination, freedom to move inside and outside of the home
etc. etc.). They held to the firm belief that men in particular and
society at large must be freed from all the collective prejudices
against women, the prejudices that society had integrated into its
culture, regarding women and women's role in society. My dictionary
states that "feminism" is a movement which promotes the advancement
of women, in education, socially and politically. I, as a feminist
of the Third Millennium, have no problem with that. I want to be out
there (just like my grandmother and my mother) in the world, at home
and abroad, campaigning for a different world from the one in which
we presently find ourselves. Just now, our world, no matter where
we live is a world of sadnesses, of war and of civil and political
conflict. A world full of injustices and inequalities between nations,
between peoples and individuals. I do not wish to bring flowers to
the dead but flowers to the living. I wish to bring not a shroud but
a dancing garment. As I try to reflect upon it and I try to understand
"feminism" and its influence on my life and upbringing I feel that
I am trying to put into words something that is felt and nothing else.
It is like trying to explain the "sound" of the wind. My feminism
is as natural to me as the wind. It is strong and it is organic. My
childhood (in my memory at least) seems to have consisted of statements
coming from voices repeating their messages within the hollow of our
house...for example... that " the wind is coming from the North East..
a storm is coming - you better not move far away from the house today."
I remember thinking how is it possible that the wind talks and tells
my father that it is bringing a storm? Then again, as a child, I remember
hearing that " Oh those two women they were "something else" - out
in the streets marching, demanding with others, first the vote, then
peace, equality, ban the bomb, knocking on doors, organising, and
the family chatter about my grandmother being a supporter of Bertrand
Russell in his campaign to get elected as a male feminist to the British
Parliament- This voice above me ( I was very small) was telling me
nothing and everything, about the wind, about my grandmother and my
mother. Yet what was handed to me was the possibility of thinking
for myself, choosing for myself and the understanding that I could
and should change the world. In my eyes and in my head, of course,
my grandmother and my mother still loom larger than life. And I must
confess that in my heart of hearts, I would like to be remembered
in the years to come as being "something else". Perhaps this means
being a passionate full blooded feminist. I really don't know.
NOW - MOVE ON TO THE END OF THE COURSE - where we were asked to submit
something new . A few days before going to Peralta I had read in the
newspaper that two prison notebooks of Nelson Mandela's had been discovered
in a cupboard in the prison, where he had been imprisoned for so many
years. A colleague of mine had also bought a book on Gandhi being
offered to the general public by an Italian National Newspaper group
. I continued to think about them in Peralta.
FIRST DRAFT of a video production for TV Broadcast.
HISTORY - THE WORLD BEHIND AND AROUND US A Video
Documentary 55 minutes long
The first part will present the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi
/ Nelson Mandela. TALES OF COURAGE, PERSISTENCE, TOLERANCE AND FORGIVENESS.
This video will link Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela and their use
of non-violent resistance in thought and action to achieve their political,
social and cultural aims and objectives. There is a strong South African
connection. South Africa the place of birth and nationality for Nelson
Mandela; for Mahatma Gandhi 24 years of his life was spent in South
Africa. This is where Mahatma Gandhi began his great experiment. How
to use non-violence within a political context to gain emanicipation.
Both men were civil rights lawyers. The second part will be a commentary
documentary using cut-backs of the first video and updating Gandhi's
influence, work and actions. How has this great experiment been creatively
adapted ? How has it influenced other cultures and moved into the
world around us privately and collectively? What is so extraordinary
about the emergence of the New South Africa? What is it about these
two men that makes the young and the old think of them as Saints?
WHY THIS PROJECT? Amidst the carnage of the twentieth century,
two heroic lives prove to the world around us (a world presently full
of cynicism) that we do not have to be slaves to violent actions and
solutions. The first great man, Mahatma Gandhi would turn the British
Empire upside down . Colonisation would never be the same again. His
way of non-violence, within a political context, became a wondrous
example of how one man's faith in the hope and dignity of humanity
went on to become humanity's hope for another vision of how the world
might be. The other great man, Nelson Mandela would walk out of a
prison after 27 years of confinement to teach a world of greed, war,
injustice and exploitation how to forgive. The power structures of
Apartheid came crashing to the ground. His actions reshaped and sealed
the fate and destiny of the New South Africa. As in the case of Mahatma
Gandhi, Nelson Mandela knew that "deep down in every human heart,
there was mercy and generosity. [people] can be taught to love, for
love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. Goodness
is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished." (page 149,
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela). Both these men ended up practising
non-violence in a brilliant manner, one to gain independence for India,
the other to obtain a multi-racial state, the new South Africa. This
documentary is essentially about the greatness of two men. First,
Mahatma Gandhi - living in South Africa and working to obtain rights
for Indians in South Africa, moving to London, becoming a barrister
and then on to India and independence (archival footage). Then the
second great man, Nelson Mandela in his youth, a lawyer trying to
obtain rights for Africans, his long stay in prison and then his release
and his inputs into the new multiracial South Africa ( live action).
It will point up how it was that these two men, who after their long
struggles and confrontations with bigotry, repression, imprisonment,
and in the case of Nelson Mandela unrelenting racism, embraced non-violence.
These two men practised their non-violence in such a way that mass
movements of peoples began to understand the need to mobilise and
work together, to bring forth a totally new aspect of popular participation,
i.e. mass movements of peoples asking for justice, social and economic,
and the right to live in peace and practise non-violence. In conclusion,
the emphasis for this video is that the South African experience of
both Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela has proven to the world at
large that a non-violent approach into one's personal as well as in
one's collective life is possible. Two marvellous examples on two
different continents have been given to the world. The video would
be shot mainly in South Africa. The archival footage would be obtained
from Berlin and South Africa. If possible, live interviews or voice-over
sound track with flashbacks would be done with Nelson Mandela. If
this proves to be difficult then other interviews/voice-over sound
track regarding Nelson Mandela's life, work and influence will be
done. These interviews or voice-over sound track will be set against
the backdrop of the time and place of the thought or action being
discussed. The preferred method of working would be co-operative,
profit sharing and joyous. Hopefully the video could be made by September
2005. Market. The target audience would be the general TV-viewing
audience (Satellite and National Broadcasting TV Channels). The secondary
audience would be the vast network of the antiapartheid movement,
the social, environmental & peace movements