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Special Preview of the indie feature WHITE DEVILS.
White Devils is the first film adaptation of Diepe Grond (Afrikaans for “deep ground” or "still waters run deep”), the seminal work of Reza de Wet, South Africa’s most celebrated female author and playwright. de Wet (1952-2012) left behind a legacy of leading a literary war against apartheid during the height of South Africa’s brutal reign of oppression and censorship.
White Devils embodies a work that clearly challenged, and eventually helped overturn, the moral principles that upheld the societal chokehold of South Africa’s era of white nationalism. Although subversive at the time, the themes of racism, intolerance, neglect, and abuse, still deliver as a timely and timeless cautionary tale.
A soul-stirring, unmercifully gothic tale, this film is a psychological/horror thriller that takes place over the course of one, seemingly endless night. Haunting and terrifying, “norms” turn upside down - night is day, fantasy is reality - it gruesomely exposes a rational decline in the wake of apartheid.
The ubiquitous image of a Sjambok, a stiff, flesh-tearing whip, throughout the film defines an unconscionable historic rite among white-born Afrikaners. Designed for animal herding, it was often used on white children as well as to beat Africans; it became a powerful symbol of Apartheid violence. As a literal and figurative symbol in this work, it forces the chilling questions: is racism in and of itself a form of child abuse? Does the circle of violence and hatred start in the home? It is no wonder that its incorporation into Reza de Wet’s depiction was instrumental in the eventual banning of the Sjambok in South Africa in 1989.
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