N!ai Film Difficulty Ranking: 2
Indigenous Batswana films aren’t easy to find, so if you know of any, please contact me here. In the meantime, check out N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman (the exclamation marks represent click sounds). It’s a documentary made by an American anthropologist, so it’s by no means a true Batswana film. However, you will get to see the impact of the white government on the independence of the !Kung people as portrayed through the life of a !Kung woman named N!ai.
From: Botswana, Africa
Watch: Trailer, Kanopy, Rent on Vimeo
Next: Another Country, Black Girl, Smoke Signals
The Breakdown
In 1970 the South African government established a reservation on the Nambibia/Botswana border restricting 800 !Kung people to an area one half the size of their original territory. This film combines footage of the !Kung people in the 1950s (when they are an independent people) with footage from the 1970s (when they are not). As a result it clearly documents the effect of the arrival of government and the white man in this remote region on the border of Botswana.
In the 1950s, before the white man arrives, the !Kung are free. They are free to find food when they are hungry and to find water whenever they are thirsty. They are free to hunt (don’t watch this if you’re a giraffe lover) and free to wander the land. Their life before the white man is framed like Thoreau’s Walden or the Lakota in Dances with Wolves – sustainable and free.
When the film revisits the !Kung in the 1970s, everything has changed. Firstly, their life is no longer sustainable – they’re now surviving on corn meal rations provided by the government. Secondly, they’re no longer free – the government have prevented them from hunting and restricted them to a reservation. It’s a two part saga depicting humanity’s fall from Eden at the hands of colonialism.
The Problem with This Film
The problem with N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman is that there’s always a distance between the filmmakers and the !Kung. This is particularly evident in one scene in which the white filmmakers are seen on camera filming a few takes of a !Kung boy running into the arms of a !Kung man. There’s a huge gap between where the white filmmakers are sitting, covered up in the shade, and the !Kung actors are standing, redoing the takes. The distance is also felt in the way that N!ai tells her story. Her narrative is reduced to a matter of fact story of her life in which N!ai talks at us in a one way conversation. As a result, the film never creates an intimacy needed to help the audience get close to understanding her experience and feelings. It just feels like she’s a subject in an anthropological study, which, as this is a film by an anthropologist, highlights the limitations of this anthropological film.
What to Watch Next
To follow up N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman head over to Australia to watch Another Country. It’s a documentary narrated by David Gulpilil about reservation life for indigenous Australians. Like the !Kung in southern Africa, the indigenous Australians have also had their way of life disrupted by the arrival of white colonialism.
To continue the theme from Another Country you could also check out Rabbit Proof Fence for the epic based on a true story escape of three indigenous Australians from a mixed-race integration camp.
Or for more indigenous films set on government reservations, watch Smoke Signals from Chris Eyre which was selected for preservation for the National Film Registry in 2018.
Lastly, for one of the first and best films on colonialism and post-colonial identity, everyone should watch Black Girl.
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