Son of Man

The remarkable, award-winning film, Son of Man (2005), directed bythe South African Mark Dornford-May, sets the Jesus story in a contemporary,fictional southern African Judea. While newsbroadcasts display the political struggles and troubles of thispostcolonial country, moments of magical realism point tosupernatural battles between Satan and Jesus as well. Jesus' Judeanstruggle with Satan begins with a haunting reprise of Matthew's'slaughter of the innocents' and moves forward in a Steve Biko-likenon-violent, community-building ministry, captured in graffiti and inthe video footage that Judas takes to incriminate Jesus. Satan andthe powers seemingly triumph when Jesus 'disappears', but thenMary creates a community that challenges such injustice bydisplaying her son's dead body upon a hillside cross. The film endswith shots of Jesus among the angels and everyday life in Khayelitsha(the primary shooting location), auguring hope of a newhumanity (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'. Thefilm is to be seen as an expression of postcolonial agency, as a call toconstructive political action, as an interpretation of the Gospels, andas a reconfiguration of the Jesus film tradition. Finally, the essays callattention to their interested, ideological interpretations by using Sonof Man to raise contemporary ethical, hermeneutical, andtheological questions. As the film itself concisely asks on behalf ofthe children featured in it and their politically active mothers,'Whose world is this'?