Manenberg  – Growing up in the Shadows of Apartheid (Waltorp & Vium 2010) is a 59 minute ethnographic documentary. The film gives an immersive experience into the area and insight into some of the challenges of growing up in this place. It follows two young people, Fazline and Warren, as they come of age.

It won a number of prizes internationally when it was released, among them New Nordic Voices at Nordic Panorama (2011), The Royal Anthropological Institute’s Basil Wright Film Prize (2011), The Bluebell Audience Award, Australia (2011), special mention at Zanzibar Film Festival (2011) and Moscow Ethnographic Film Festival (2011), official selection at CPH: DoX (2010), and Tri-Continental Film Festival, South Africa (2011), screened at festivals across the world and distributed by DR International Sales.

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Documentary
’58”, 16:9, colour HD
Directors: Karen Waltorp & Christian Vium
Cinematography: Karen Waltorp & Christian Vium
Editing: Rasmus Stensgaard Madsen
Music: Morten Riis
Waltorp, Vium & DR International Sales, 2010

Do you remember where you were on your 21st birthday? What was on your mind back then?
Where were you headed? What was holding you back?

Manenberg is an intimate portrait of Fazline and Warren, two young ‘Cape Coloureds,’ coming-of-age in a worn-down and overpopulated ghetto-area, constructed during the apartheid-regime to house coloured families with low incomes. Here, ‘children have children’ and the chances of becoming a gangster are greater than the chances of creating something new in the ruins of the past – but Manenberg is also as area with strong ties between the inhabitants in the claustrophobic houses. 

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The film raises familiar questions about poverty and power, through the voices and experienced of two young people born into as uncompromising world. One of the most piercing questions of the film is about the power of place in determining ones future.  Manenberg is a film about hardship, hope, and the human capacity for forgiveness. It gives an immersive experience of the area where the DigiSAt project unfolds.

If in Copenhagen, you can watch the documentary at the Videoteque (Videoteket) at the Danish Film Institute, Gothersgade 55, 1 floor, 1123 Copenhagen.