Living In A Nonsense Place. Special Film Screening & Director Q&A

In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the release of Nelson Mandela and the synchronous Theatrical release of “Living in a Nonsense Place,” we invite you to a screening of this award-winning documentary which garnered international acclaim. The film by Noreen Ash Mackay [NAM] was shot clandestinely in Apartheid South Africa. It reveals the harrowing existence of a community of black people living illicitly in the rubble of what was once a beautiful Cape Dutch mansion in white suburbia. The house will be replaced by an ugly layered-cake office block. There has been ‘white-flight’ from the unrest in downtown Johannesburg to a tree-lined suburb designated the new downtown. The residents are actively employed in demolishing the very house they’re squatting in to make way for the apartheid-driven redevelopment. At that time, it was illegal to be black in a white area after dark.

The film shows the hardships and the fortitude of the people. The resilience of the African way. Richard, the Keeper of Fire makes use of the branches from fallen trees; Myriam, the Water Bearer makes use of the one faucet left running for her laundry and her moonshine brew. In the dust of the bulldozed walls, the people whistle and Dance. The film follows Myriam to her day job as a nanny and to the home she rarely visits in Sowet,o where her child lives.

Captured under perilous conditions, the subject matter being too contentious to be edited in South Africa, NAM risked arrest and the confiscation of the footage in smuggling it out. She faced a perilous moment boarding an international flight with the reels surreptitiously packed in a carry-on bag. Awarded an NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) post-production grant, NAM edited the film in NYC. The final edit was completed in the New South Africa on the very television station that would previously have banned it.

Following the screening, the documentarian NAM will host a Q&A session. Don’t miss this powerful testament to tenacity and the art of storytelling under censorship. Spawned by the challenges of bringing this story to life, NAM created the course Box Office Documentary for the New School’s Media Studies Master’s program.

For details and comments, contact NAM at [email protected]

*Space is limited and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

Host or Publisher Hudson Park Library