A true
artist. When I went to see his film, '
Nice to meet you, please don't rape me' I didn't know what to expect, but I was blown away by the end. More than half the
people in the
screening room walked out after the first scene, a scene in which a
black man pulls a
gun on a
white man and demands that he beats him and forces the white man to
fuck him in his
ass.
Ian Kerkhof was raised in
The Netherlands after being born in
South Africa in March of
1964. '
Nice to meet you' takes place in
South Africa and is full of
cultural references and obscure artistic gestures that make perfect sense to him and other citizens of South Africa. After the screening I was totally
dazed and confused by what I had seen. Lots of male nudity, lots of violence, not a lot of explanations. It's a good thing Ian was there himself to clear up any questions anyone had.
During the
Q & A he essentially answered all of these questions by saying: "You're not supposed to
get it. I was tired of South African filmmakers just immitating the
bullshit American films that you guys sent us. It was demeaning so I made a South African movie for South Africans. I'm sorry you guys can't get it, but hopefully you
understand the general
tone."
I sure thought I understood the tone. Things are fucked in South Africa. In the movie there is a psuedo-
comical scene where a group of males makes plans to increase the number of
rapes in South Africa. They feel ashamed that their
rape rate was only one every
75 seconds. This
film was made in
1995 and by
1999, when I saw the film, the rape rate was approximately
3 per minute. Most rapes in South Africa today are simply called
robberies.
This was an amazingly effective
tool for me. I learned a lot about
art,
politics and
South Africa that night. I also learned a lot about
misunderstanding and
determination when Ian mentioned that when 'Nice to meet you' was first shown to a major festival audience over
800 people walked out after the first scene and by the end, only
60 of about
1000 were left. Ian said he never flinched. It never bothered him a bit.
Fuck 'em if they can't take it...
Later in the week I was lucky enough to see his most popular film 'Wasted', a film about the
French Club scene and
Ecstasy. This was also the first feature-length film I had seen that was filmed entirely with
digital cameras.
Other Kerkhof films include '
Ten Monologues from the Lives of the
Serial Killers' and 'Kyodai Makes the Big time'.