WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A SAINT?
Picking up a camera to tell a story requires a considerable degree of courage on the part of afilmmaker. It requires an even greater level of vulnerability and introspection to turn that camera onyourself. Cape Helena, written and directed by first time documentary feature filmmaker DamianSean Samuels, follows the filmmaker on his long and arduous journey to rediscover his family’s historic linkages to the remote mid-Southern Atlantic island of St. Helena.
Writer & Director Damian Sean Samuels
What starts out as a mission to trace his great grandfather’s burial site soon evolves into a quest tounderstand cultural heritage and unique ancestry of the people of St. Helena. The filmhighlights thecolonial history of the island, its importance in global maritime trade, the role it played in theabolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the racial and social re-orientation of the immigrant peoples of St. Helena and their descendants in apartheid South Africa where many of themsought work in the first half of twentieth century.
Central Story
Born and raised in the South African coastal city of Cape Town, the director in a voice over narrationconfesses to three generations of nurtured nostalgia embedded in his family’s collectiveconsciousness. His grandmother always told him he was “descended from a Saint”. Saint is a termused by inhabitants of St. Helena and their descendants in the diaspora to affectionately refer tothemselves and their shared genealogy.
Damian’s late great grandfather, Edward Alexander Caswell, who was born in St. Helena in 1875, was one of the many St. Helenian men and women who emigrated in search of work in the mines of SouthAfrica between 1850 and 1910. Following his death in a cart accident in South Africa in 1939 and thedeath of his sickly wife, his children, who are the filmmaker’s grandmother and two siblings, wereplaced in a Roman Catholic orphanage in Parow. They eventually left the orphanage to start lives of
their own in a segregated South Africa. Until the making of this film, they had no idea where their father was laid to rest and the filmmaker’s goal is to find his burial place for them.
The director also uses his experience of making the film to do some soul-searching. Like all of us, he is just trying to find his place in this crazy world we live in. In a multi-racial post-Apartheid society likeSouth Africa’s, it might be easy for cultural nuances to be erased in favor of assimilation. In this, thefilmmaker swims against the current to provide a sensitive and divergent view of his own culture andheritage.
Over the film’s 70-minute run time, we see Damian piece together the fragments of his late great grandfather’s life on the island and in South Africa where he spent a considerable portion of his life. The film also introduces us to other characters of St. Helenian descent. The Saints share their nostalgia for their homeland and the push and pull factors for their immigration. They also indulge theaudience in the complexities of starting their lives afresh in South Africa during apartheid where they, for the first time in their lives, faced discrimination on the basis of their complexion.
The History of a Melting Pot
It would be hard to argue that the central character and star of this film is not the island of St. Helenaitself. It is a sparsely populated Atlantic island that is recognized as British Overseas Territory. Theisland was discovered uninhabited by Portuguese explorers in the early sixteenth century. The islandwas used by a number of merchants and imperial powers as a maritime refreshment point as they sought to use a sea route to Asia. It was formally colonized by the English East India Company in 1657.
The native population of the island currently stands at 5633 and is according to the people of St. Helena, composed of “the descendants of settlers, soldiers and slaves”. The island is truly a melting pot of diverse ethnic backgrounds plucked from different parts of the world as a result of Britain’s colonial enterprise.
The volcanic tropical island was of immense strategic importance in Britain’s quest for empire. It served as a “refueling” point for Britain colonial forces to to rest and gather supplies. According toAdam Sizeland, director of the St. Helena Museum, who features in the film, “There wouldn’t be an[British] empire in India [if it wasn’t for St. Helena]”.
It was also used by British slavery abolitionist agents to impound slave ships from West Africa boundfor the Americas. The island was used as a site to undock slaves from impounded slave ships and set them free. However, with many of these slaves having no understanding of how to get back to their exact homes, many of them died on the island while others merely proceeded elsewhere as free-men.
Due to its remoteness, the island was also used to exile political prisoners considered to becounterproductive to Britain’s pursuit of empire. Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled and died on St. Helena. Zulu King Dinuzulu ka Cetshwayo was exiled there too in 1890 for leading his army against British annexers. Even the defeated Boer soldiers of the Anglo-Boer wars were sent there.
With no real local macro-economic activity happening on the island, Indigent migrant workers fromSt. Helena was a staple of the labor force in the South African mining boom. Despite the long symbiotic history between St. Helena and mainland South Africa, migrants of darker complexion who moved toSouth Africa faced discrimination under the apartheid system being designated as colored in thecountry’s caste system.
Narrative Style, Aesthetics and Themes
Cape Helena is both biographical and historical. The documentary narrative takes us through thedirector’s family tree with various older living members of his extended family contributing their ownpiece to the puzzle of who his great grandfather was. The larger historical aspects of St. Helena’s history are also investigated from the perspective of its inhabitants to provide a more detailed andauthentic understanding of the island’s past.
Themes of identity, racial discrimination, family secrecy, the legacy of colonial conquest and slavery, conservation of cultural heritage and mortality are also discussed in great detail over the course of the film. This provides a meticulously layered tapestry of the various social and economic factors that have framed the perspective that the people of St. Helena have long used to view themselves and theworld around them.
The film’s narrative is mainly aided by the extensive use of talking heads interviews of various characters connected to Damian’s family and the island of St. Helena. Archival photography and voicenarration to expand the visual scheme and sonic landscape of the film. The original score of the filmcomposed by Gary Thomas is understated but provides a poignant audio backdrop to the nostalgia
and sense of loss that permeates throughout the film. Cape Helena is also a tightly edited film. Not asingle shot is wasted.
Emotional Resonance
The story, discourse and technical elements of this documentary truly come together to provide theaudience with a heartfelt sense of perspective and appreciation for the many successes and evenfailures of their ancestors and the immeasurable odds they had to overcome to set off a chain of events that allowed them to have the quality of life they enjoy in the present.
It is also quite difficult to not be left with the sense that for one to move forward in life, they shouldknow where they are coming from. Through Damian’s own path to self-discovery ,the viewer might becompelled to understand where they come from and, powered by that, chart a prosperous path for future generations to come.
The film also serves as a stark reminder of the many injustices of colonialism and the apartheidsystem in South Africa and how these systems of subjugation left scars on the people they haddominion over.
A Minor Critique
As I mentioned earlier, St. Helena is an Overseas British Territory. This means the residents of St. Helena are British citizens. Many other overseas territories of former colonial powers have since cut ties in favor of self-governance and self-determination. However, the inhabitants of St. Helena still describe themselves as British and proudly so. It leaves me wondering if this colonial union betweenBritain and its second oldest overseas territory is something the filmmaker could have interrogatedjust a little bit more.
Conclusion
Based on my first viewing of Cape Helena, it is hard not to be in awe of the breadth and depth of storytelling that this documentary employs. It is a film that will tap into the average audiencemember’s understanding of the inherent human need to belong. It also encourages the audience todraw inspiration from those that came before them in their pursuit of a better life. The documentary also serves as an entry point for anyone interested in digging deeper into the lore of St. Helena.
This film is a thematically dense and thought-provoking piece of self-reflexive art that everyoneshould definitely watch at least once and, who knows, perhaps they too might find their way home.
The film’s poster
Catch the film at the Encounters South African International Documentary Festival: http://encounters.co.za/
Author: Timothy Niwamanya
This review emanates from the Talent Press programme, an initiative of Talents Durban in collaboration with the Durban FilmMart Institute and FIPRESCI. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author (Timothy Niwamanya) and cannot be considered as constituting an official position of the organisers.
