Rainbow nation decoded

Filmmaker Zara Julius's documentary, Mixed Space, features frank observations about what it's like to be bi-racial in a country that's both obsessed with and glosses over race.

Speaking to The Times, Julius said Mixed Space started as conversations with friends and "friends of friends" about their experiences as mixed-race people.

"As someone who's lighter skinned, there are a lot of privileges I've been afforded by virtue of that. You don't want to take that to black spaces. I wanted to create a space where we could have these conversations," she said.

Julius wanted to capture those conversations in some way and initially she shot photo essays featuring some of the people she spoke to, but found the medium didn't do justice to the project or the message it was trying to convey.

"The aim was to draw on the nuance of identity, and identity that's in flux."

In the film the participants share their personal experiences with race and racism in South Africa.

The opening sequence features the voice of activist Alex Hotz, who speaks about being in school and one of her teachers asking her in front of her classmates: "So . what are you?"

Being interrogated about your racial make-up when you're of mixed heritage is nothing new - many of the film's participants speak about being constantly questioned about it - even on dates.

Julius said: "Being racially ambiguous, people ask you from a really young age: 'What are you?' From when you learn to speak, you develop this speech that you give to people when they ask you those questions.

''You begin to lay out your entire racial background - you don't even see that as a micro-aggression but it's a very personal thing to ask."

One of the topics the film explores is why the beloved post-94 notion of non-racialism is problematic. The existence of mixed-race children is often used as an example of the rainbow nation working, as though sex across the colour lines is an antidote to racism.

Musician Londi Gamedze says in the film: "I really hate the way that people see me as this perfect rainbow-nation child. As though I am this post-racial, futuristic person who settles any kind of debate about race . simply because a white and a black person have a kid, it doesn't mean that racism is over."

And, as videographer Kyla Philander points out in the documentary: "It takes so much more than having sex with a person of colour not to be a racist."

Julius echoed this sentiment.

"When you're mixed race or when people see interracial relationships, they have the idea that love conquers all. It's a very reductive way of looking at things - it eradicates a lot of pain that exists in interracial relationships, of trying to navigate the society we live in . We can't act as though we love and exist on islands.

"We're influenced by the way society shapes race and shapes gender . We can't pretend love doesn't exist in that domain."

Julius, who has a background in social anthropology, said film has often portrayed people of colour in violent ways and part of her aim as a filmmaker and photographer was to change the way that Africans are represented across various mediums.

About Mixed Space in particular, she said: "It was important for me to explore that, to have a critical conversation around identity and being mixed-race. It was important to have broader conversations about people who, under apartheid, would not have been classified as black but are now trying to find their blackness."

• Mixed Space is showing at Cape Town's AVA Gallery until June 25. It will show at King Kong, in Johannesburg, on July 6. Zara Julius's work can be found on www.zarajulius.com