IMMORTALISING ICONIC AFRIKAANS POET INGRID JONKER
By Daniel E. Dercksen

Although Ingrid Jonker died tragically more than forty years ago, her poetry and persona are very much alive in Helena Nogueira's insightful and inspiring documentary feature Ingrid Jonker: Her Lives and Time, now showing exclusively at the Waterfront Nouveau before touring to London, where Emma Thompson plans the screen it at the South African House on Trafalgar Square.

Some might frown upon a filmmaker born in Mozambique making a documentary delving into the life of one of South Africa's iconic heroes, and uncovering intimate secrets that were buried for four decades, delivering a revealing expose on a dark part of our history.

After watching the documentary, listening to the overwhelming response from others, and talking to Helena Nogueira over a coffee at the Waterfront before her Cape Town premiere, it became clear that no-one else would have been more suited and capable to bring Ingrid Jonker's fascinating story to life.

"My choice of Ingrid was not an intellectual one," says Noqueira. "I was intrigued after hearing Madiba's speech," she says, referring to the famous speech delivered by Nelson Mandela when he paid tribute to her in his inauguration of parliament.

"She was both an Afrikaner and an African," said Mandela. "To her and others like her we owe a debt to life itself."

When Nogueira read an article in the paper on Jonker she was infuriated and flung it into the dustbin because Jonker was portrayed as "yet another victim, and yet another female loser."

Still, Nogueira had an intuitive feeling that their paths would cross.

"I somehow knew she was going to be a part of my life. I did not then realise how long and how intimate it would be."

Two days later when Noqueira had dinner with Shan Moodley, who produced her first film, Quest For Love, with Anant Singh. When Moodley told her that he had a special project in mind for her, Nogueira instinctively knew what it was.

Fate intervened and Jonker and Noquiera's paths did indeed cross, marking the beginning of a journey that took ten years to reach our screens.

What made it such a rewarding experience for Nogueira, who researched, wrote, directed and edited the documentary, was "Discovering Ingrid."

"To me she symbolises a lot that I like to believe about life.  That each person is an individual, and that we can and we do make a difference, no matter how small we are. It's been nearly half a century that she's been dead and her friends still talk about her as if she was alive two years ago. To touch people like that, so deeply, to be a part of something so special in their lives that four decades later, I think that's extraordinary."

"You know what they say about artists. Artists only die when they are forgotten. That's why one keeps them alive," says Nogueira.

"Ingrid is so modern; one forgets that she lived 40 years ago. That's what I have been trying to do with my film, to capture the various periods from the 30s to the sixties. Otherwise people forget. It was a tragedy in her life because she lived 40 years ago. Had Ingrid been living today she might have found much more independence for her mental condition. If you think of Marilyn Monroe living at the same time; she also found it difficult with men who found her sexy but couldn't deal with her being intellectually challenging."

What does Nogueira think makes Jonker such a unique spirit?

"People always conform to their times, but she was unique, which inspires a lot of people. She's got almost a mythological dimension to her, like that creature that burnt his wings because he flew to close to the sun."

For Nogueira Ingrid has also got a "dramatic allure".

"She was creating herself for her poetry, re-inventing herself through her work, and at the same time, rising where nobody else did. What she was doing with the Afrikaans language was quite unique in itself. How she was living her life was very unique because nobody else dared to live the way she did. She had an enormous lust for life. That was only matched by her passion for writing."

"To me she has all of that romantic appeal, but the fact that she died young, consumed by life, is an extraordinary paradox in itself. That becomes a bit like Monroe and Dean. They captured something that is tangible. This is why for us we project everything onto them."

It is not surprising to find a personal link between Jonker and Nogueira.

"I grew up in Mozambique with cafe society, where art and culture is not something terribly highbrow that you've got to endure. It's something that you absolutely live to the most. Ingrid, in so many ways, believed that. That is how I personally felt that link with her being surrounded by a lot of writers and painters myself."

Another appealing factor for Nogueira was Jonker's integrity.

"As a person she was fascinating and interesting, with all her madness, with all her demands, and all her neediness, and sometimes all the absolute genius. I've always been in awe of artists in the creative process. I've always been interested to see the role of the artist in society. I really believe that civilisation is defined by how we cherish the artist in our country."

Has Jonker changed Nogueira's life?

"She had nothing. Apart from this big talent and great sex appeal, she came from down-trodden, being incredibly poor, her mother breaking up in front of her eyes, her father who rejected her before she was even born. If you look at what she was given and what she made of it, I think that is a great lesson I took from her life. We are who we are, not what we are. You can choose how to act, how to do things in life. That makes a difference. Ingrid had so much tragedy and yet she never lost that curiosity about life. That absolute lust for life. I think that is very touching."

Nogueira hopes that South African audiences will be able to look at the life of somebody else and discover so much about their own lives.

"To understand so much more about who you are and the times you life in, and our own sense of history. That to me is the gift of a biography. It's not just one life, is the life of that person's time.  In Ingrid's case, because it's so timeless, captures out time as well. I hope that's what people will be left with.  I hope they will go out and read her poetry and listen to her very unique voice."

Nogueira's 10 year journey with Jonker is not over yet, but only the beginning of another journey.  Nogueira wrote the screenplay 'All That Breaks', the story of Ingrid Jonker's life. It is was read by companies such as Dreamworks, who knew nothing about Ingrid and very little about South Africa and said that it will find a very big art audience, comparing it to The Hours and American Beauty.

Working on polishing the script with Noqueira are the likes of Emma Thompson and Stephen Fry, who did a workshop at the Market Theatre at the beginning of the year, with Oscar-winning producer David Parfitt securing finance for the film.

"I think we are all like little mirrors to each other," concludes Nogeira. "If we are lucky enough to have good friends, they hold a very faithful mirror back. That is something what only really true artists like Ingrid do; society can identify them in that mirror. That's why Ingrid has such an appeal. Apart from the romantic allure, and the longing, and the search for love are all things we can identify with, Ingrid held a mirror we can see ourselves in."

READ THE COMPLETE QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION WITH HELENA NOGUEIRA

Read more about INGRID JONKER: HER LIVES AND TIME

Copyright © Daniel E. Dercksen/ The Writing Studio
Published with permission in the Weekend Argus (April 27, 2007 )