Family Matters

Through the lineages of two farming families, The Canelands is an exploration of land, generations and race in the sugarcane plantations of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. A visually striking love letter to the land and displaced communities in (previously) occupied territories, this film touches on both the micro and macro narratives pertaining to questions of diaspora, Indian indenture, land custodianship and the complexities of land reform in a racially diverse country like South Africa. Through the personal testimonies of the Sharma and Madlala families, we are given a window into the protracted nature of loss and the intergenerational insistence on renewal in the wake of British settler-colonialism and South Africa’s racially exploitative apartheid regime.

For the Kultursymposium Weimar 2021, Zara Julius talks in a short interview about the project and her work with different families in South Africa.
 
The Canelands is part of the series Family Matters and is a project in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg. For the Kultursymposium Weimar 2021, The Canelands was shown in the livestream and in the media library. Due to copyright usage rights, The Canelands is no longer available.
 
The two video works Bo-Kaap and Shayandima by Zara Julius are still available on the website of the regional project of South Africa Family Matters: https://www.goethe.de/ins/za/en/kul/sup/fam.html