African Face, Colonial Tongue

At it’s core ‘’African Face, Colonial Tongue’’ is a visual interpretation of an essay by the same name, written by Serati Maseko. It exlores the intersection of language, culture, and identity; it speaks to the tug of war that exists within one who has multiple competing cultural identities. Studies have shown that languages shape the way we see the world, and the way that we think and express ourselves, when we think of colonialism as not just a seizing or occupation of land, but a transplantation of an entire cosmology of a people into the minds and bodies of another, and languages being an embodiment of these cosmologies, we can see how this can create an inner conflict. The film opens with the subject being on a search, a search for her cultural roots, as represented by her language. We hear in the background the voice of her grandmother almost responding to her from a distance, the grandmother representing her ancestors, the keeper and personification of her culture, which she feels distant from. It goes on to describe the complex interplay between the colonial language and the native language, with the subject experiencing this interaction almost like a continual conquest of the former over the latter, describing the colonial language as that which dominates and governs the mind and body, and the native tongue as that which gives way easily

Learn more about the project:

www.africanface.org

www.seratimaseko.com