Film Review: The Bang Bang Club

1.- In general, what did you like and disliked about the film?

I really liked the movie in general, it is nice to see a perspective of photographers and journalists in tough situations, this specific aspects of their lives is not usually portrayed, at least in what I have seen in movies, they are always represented writing or taking photos of conflicts in Europe or US. 

I also liked how they did not portray them as heroes that saved the world, they were humans doing their job that were consumed by the feeling of competition and of winning the first place in photography and tragedy captured in them. The most terrible the picture, the better.

What I liked and made me think (and still does) was how Kevin Carter felt about his photo of the famished little girl, because it shows how he forgot that he was taking photos of humans and that he could do something about it.

As you said in your blog, the director make it feel as if you were in there, and I truly enjoyed it, because the photographers angered me more, like I did not want to be in such places.

2.- How does the film make you think about your future role as journalists and film makers/producers/creators/directors?

As a future journalist, I have to say that I was quite shocked by their ethics. It was so, so wrong, I was so angered by how they behaved, they completely stopped seeing the people as humans, the just saw them as moments to be forever immortalized, it got even worse after Greg Marinovich won the Pulitzer Prize. I felt as if their were scavengers. 

I hope that, if I work as a journalist in the future, I don't loose my ethics and my sense of respect towards the people and the environment. I can not describe my feelings, as I said before, I was shocked because it made me realize that sometimes we forget our limits and surpass was is correct and what not. I think the worst part was when they were taking photos besides the Blue Helmets, they did not just risk their own lives, but also the ones of those supposed to peacekeeping. 

3.- In the film, and various of the other films, we have seen how black South Africans went to vote massively in April 1994 to steal the downfall of the apartheid system with electoral triumph of Nelson Mandela and the ANC, now more than 20 years later, we see many of the problems originated during the apartheid are still present such as land inequality, class inequality, unemployment, etc. How have the dreams from the anti-apartheid struggle played out since the ANC has been in power?

I think the Freedom charter was forgotten. The majority of black South Africans are still struggling to regain spaces dominated by white people, and to have a place in the high profit jobs. It saddens me so much that all those beautiful dreams are still undone. It seems as if they don't recall what they went trough.

I think that the ANC got lost in their power and dedicated themselves to search an increase in their GDP, but that does not mean that the money will go to the people that have been impoverished by the unfairness of past regimes. 

I agree with you about the fact that the ANC has undergone the same process as "La Concertación in Chile". They have a lot of similarities, like the fact that they both came to power after a dictatorial regime (I think apartheid was a kind of dictatorship), that they made a lot of neoliberal reforms that did not benefit the poorest part of the countries. They are also similar in how they use their status of liberators to make some sort of blackmail to obtain the votes. 

I truly hope that in South Africa will come a president that will respect their people wishes and necessities, they deserve it so much after all that suffering.