Liliesleaf Farm Mayibuye: In Search of the Spectres of History
- Submitting institution
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Arts University Bournemouth, the
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- Gaal-Holmes_33035 Farm
- Type
- Q - Digital or visual media
- Publisher
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- Month
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- Year
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- ‘Liliesleaf Farm Mayibuye: In Search of the Spectres of History’ (2016) is a 9-minute Super 8, 16mm and digital film project supported by Arts Council England and funded residencies at no.w.here lab (UK), Hosking Houses Trust (UK) & Nirox Foundation (S.Africa). It is included in the British Council film directory and was in the Official Selection ‘Experimenta’ screenings at the BFI 60th Film Festival. Dissemination also includes numerous conference papers.
The research-informed project considers how personal/political histories open up the narratives of a place. Liliesleaf Farm (Rivonia, South Africa) was the 1960s headquarters of the military wing of the African National Congress. Nelson Mandela lived at Liliesleaf, under the alias of David Motsamayi, and underground anti-apartheid meetings took place at the farm. ‘Operation Mayibuye’, an undercover campaign of sabotage, intended to bring down the apartheid government, however, a police raid on the farm (1963) and the Rivonia Trial (1964) resulted in the lifetime imprisonment of activists like Mandela and Walter Sisulu. Family archives include film and photographic records at Liliesleaf as this was the family home (1966/7), after Gaal-Holmes’ German/Hungarian parents moved from the Congo to South Africa. Liliesleaf house therefore acts as a palimpsest, opening up multiple layers of history to question complicity, truth and the diffuseness of memory.
Liliesleaf Museum assisted with archival research, making available documents, police photographs and a 1960s documentary re-enacting the 1963/4 Liliesleaf events. Experimentation with film materiality and content are central to the dual-screen film, with the 8mm home-movie enlarged to 16mm through Optical and Debrie Printing, and hand-processing to expose film materiality. Outtakes from the documentary are situated alongside the reworked home-movie footage to open up narratives for considering intersecting personal/political histories informed by a quote from W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz. Music was specially commissioned by award-winning Australian, singer-songwriter, Emily Barker.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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