THE MOTHER'S HOUSE

DC Premiere

Three generations of the Moses family-Miche, her mother Valencia and Valencia's mother Amy, live together in a small house in Cape Town's Bonteheuwel community, an Apartheid-produced ghetto pierced by domestic violence and gangsterism.

In THE MOTHERS' HOUSE, Francois Verster has created a richly detailed and deeply emotional portrait of the Moses women, their alternate affection and animosity toward one another, their reactions to the pervasive violence surrounding them, and their endeavors to find their own unique places and selves within that community and their tight-knit family unit. The film shows the women at home and in the streets around their home, and men are almost entirely absent in both places-only boys of Miche's age appear at all. Each woman's story is indicative of her time of life: teenage Miche's coming-of-age, her mother's pregnancy and her grandmother's reflections on errors of the past.

Yet Verster's film resists symbolic universalizing. The narrative here is so subtle, and the Moses family so extraordinarily natural on screen, that their depiction is remarkably personal and immediate. The camera alternately appears to eavesdrop on them and to be a confidant in times of emotional distress.

Verster's smart and deft treatment of his subject-matter results in an arresting characterization, alternately shocking and heart-breaking, of South African domestic life and women's experience.

-Caroline Small

DIRECTOR BIO
Francois Verster is a multi-talented South African director, producer and camerman who has won a multitude of awards for his work documenting the struggle against and recovery from Apartheid. His debut film PAVEMENT ARISTOCRATS: THE BERGIES OF CAPE TOWN received the Avanti Award in 1999. Verster has published poems, short stories, reviews and articles in magazines and academic journals and is a contributing member of the European Documentary Network. He works extensively with South African television, and teaches a course in documentary directing at City Varsity in Cape Town.

Print Source:
Stefan Blank
Isotrope
28 Hastings Street; 5 Hastings Court
CAPETOWN 8001
South Africa
+27.21.424.1563
info@themothershouse.co.za

6/15 at 1:30 PM

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