Perhaps the normal person after spending two entire weeks at Sundance completely immersed in film would not willingly choose to spend her first free day after the festival watching yet another film. However, I am not a normal person. I believe that this has been very well established by now.
This is why I spent yesterday happily watching a new film from British director, Anthony Fabian. Actually, I didn't just watch the film. I absorbed it. While initially I thought I was just going to perhaps learn something more or new about the issues of apartheid in South Africa, what actually happened was that I learned a lot more about myself. A film that provides that type of experience is always a film worth watching. Always.
SKIN is a film that follows the true story of Sandra Laing, a black child born to white Afrikaner parents during apartheid in South Africa. Her parents are small shopkeepers in a rural area who provide goods to their mostly black neighbors. The matter of Sandra's skin color is fairly well ignored by simply not talking about it until she is sent off to a boarding school for white Afrikaner children. When she is expelled from the school for being "coloured" it is then that her parents and Sandra must come to terms with the fact that she is certainly being judged by the color of her skin and not by her heritage.
The film follows Sandra's story from her father's dramatic fight with his very country to have his only daughter be classified as white though her skin is black to Sandra then finding herself trapped inside her very own skin, wanting so very much to just belong and not truly belonging anywhere. This film pushes all our own buttons about racial identity, the pure insanity that is racism, and reminds us clearly how easily we each make assumptions about a person simply because of the color of their skin.
SKIN is not just a film about one victim of apartheid in South Africa. It should not be classified as yet another South African film. This film is a film that speaks for each and every one of us. It deftly grapples with the universal truths of religion and genetics, of our family bonds and what will ultimately break them, with identity and with the sacrifices we all make for self-preservation.
Seeing this film will touch you in at least a small way, but more probably it will truly touch your heart.
SKIN was first shown at the Toronto Film Festival to extraordinary reviews. This week it bowed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. If you're lucky enough to live in the Los Angeles area, you can go see the film as part of the Pan African Film Festival. It will be screening as the Centerpiece Gala on February 11, 2009 at 7:00 p.m. Additional information about future SKIN screenings can be found here.
