The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

In Hollywood, the genre of the feature film biography, or the ‘biopic’ has reared its head
from time to time, to provide epic visual spectacles in the form of stories of remarkable
lives of moral greatness, 56 or to provide a platform for the recovery of a life of
leadership, previously obscured by controversy, and to project it into the mainstream. 57
In 2002‐3, the release of Frida 58 took a visual narration of the life of Mexican artist, Frida
Kahlo, to a mass international audience of cinema‐goers, and into further circuits of
fashion, beauty and celebrity, constituting yet another phase in the history of
“Fridamania, Fridolatory, Fridaphilia and Frida fever”. 59
‘Devouring’ Frida Kahlo on film
Described as a “poem on canvass”, Frida chronicled Kahlo’s “bold and uncompromising
life” and celebrated her “remarkable contribution” to the world of art. Kahlo was
presented as a woman, who, in the 1920s and 1930s in Mexico, “knew who she was and
56 Perhaps among the most significant of these was Gandhi (Directed and Produced by Richard
Attenborough, Columbia Tri‐Star, 1982), which won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture,
Best Actor, and Best Director. Gandhi presented a magisterial account of the Indian lawyer, Mohandas
Gandhi, who went on to become the spiritual leader of a nation and the symbol of its independence.
Following twenty years of research and preparation, Attenborough constructed a cliographic narrative
of the ‘critical events’ in Gandhi’s life that drove him along a supposed ‘historic journey’. Here, he
evolved almost seamlessly from colonial subject, to statesman, to modern‐day messiah and
‘inspirational figure’, who gave the world a non‐violent, alternative method of challenging oppression.
Five years later, Attenborough turned his film biographical attentions to the South African struggle
and made Cry Freedom (Directed and Produced by Richard Attenborough, Marble Arch Productions
c.1987), based upon the life Steve Biko as told by Donald Woods. See Chapter Four.
57 A good example was Malcolm X (Directed by Spike Lee, Warner Studios, 1992), which presented a
portrayal of the complex transformations in the life of Malcolm X, and which drew upon Malcolm X’s
autobiography (Malcolm X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley (New
York: Ballantine Books, 1992). Malcolm X is seen by some as one of the most important films about the
black experience in the United States. The book about Malcolm’s life history, named as an
‘autobiography’ (and thus as his story narrated by himself) has a more complex authorship, and was
based on extensive audiotaped interviews which Haley had with Malcolm just before he was
assassinated in 1965.
58 Frida was directed by Julie Taymor (Miramax, 2002).
59 Margaret A Lindauer, Devouring Frida: The Art History and Popular Celebrity of Frida Kahlo,
Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1999, p 152. The screenplay for Frida was
adapted from Hayden Herrera, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo (New York: Harper & Rowe, 1983).
See also the film companion book by Julie Taymor (with Clancy Sigal and Linda Sunshine) (eds),
Frida: Bringing Frida Kahloʹs Life and Art to Film (New York: Newmarket Pictorial Moviebook, 2002)
which includes a foreword by Herrera praising Taymor’s translation of her text and Frida’s life to
the screen and an introduction by Taymor herself explaining the steps she took to re‐create Frida’s
physical and mental worlds. As the film’s ‘driving force’, Hayek has also written a brief
introduction.
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