Son of Man

The remarkable, award-winning film, Son of Man (2005), directed by
the South African Mark Dornford-May, sets the Jesus story in a contemporary,
fictional southern African Judea. While news
broadcasts display the political struggles and troubles of this
postcolonial country, moments of magical realism point to
supernatural battles between Satan and Jesus as well. Jesus' Judean
struggle with Satan begins with a haunting reprise of Matthew's
'slaughter of the innocents' and moves forward in a Steve Biko-like
non-violent, community-building ministry, captured in graffiti and in
the video footage that Judas takes to incriminate Jesus. Satan and
the powers seemingly triumph when Jesus 'disappears', but then
Mary creates a community that challenges such injustice by
displaying her son's dead body upon a hillside cross. The film ends
with shots of Jesus among the angels and everyday life in Khayelitsha
(the primary shooting location), auguring hope of a new
humanity (Genesis 1.26).

This book's essays situate Son of Man in its African context,
exploring the film's incorporation of local customs, music, rituals,
and events as it constructs an imperial and postcolonial 'world'. The
film is to be seen as an expression of postcolonial agency, as a call to
constructive political action, as an interpretation of the Gospels, and
as a reconfiguration of the Jesus film tradition. Finally, the essays call
attention to their interested, ideological interpretations by using Son
of Man to raise contemporary ethical, hermeneutical, and
theological questions. As the film itself concisely asks on behalf of
the children featured in it and their politically active mothers,
'Whose world is this'?