People play, enjoy and make love in the dynamic and positive universe created by South African filmmaker, artist and film theorist Jyoti Mistry (Cause of Death), using found footage from European film archives, particularly Amsterdam’s Eye Filmmuseum. This is an unfettered celebration of the body and of love, in scenes of men playing sports, women bathing, and scenes of lovemaking on coastal dunes. Queer love suffuses the atmosphere; eroticism will not be pigeonholed.
The film sometimes even breaks away from its cinematographic limits, with animated birds, fish and leaves escaping the frame and black-and-white images bursting out in an explosion of pink. The spoken word performance by Kgafela oa Magogodi and Napo Masheane forms a jazzy, incantational aural backdrop offering solace, excitement and encouragement: away with shame, guilt and self-hatred.
Loving In Between is the third part of Mistry’s archive trilogy on race, sex and gender. This part was inspired by the poem “Advice” by Langston Hughes: “Folks, I’m telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean—so get yourself a little loving in between.”
Stills
