Sunny Land

Summary

There are countless Sun Cities in the world. Perhaps the most famous
and certainly the most bizarre of these is Sun City in South
Africa, a huge resort with a disco, casino and swimming pools
two hours north of Johannesburg by car. It was built in the 80s,
when the Apartheid system was attempting to prevent any sort
of encounter between black and white. Except in Sun City, that
is. Under the banner of supposedly apolitical entertainment, a tourism laboratory to carry out radical political experiments
was set up here, a zone simultaneously real and unreal. It is to
the film′s credit that it is able to make this recognizable.

The film unearths the strangest archive footage in a clever and
entertaining manner; one visitor to the resort recalls a Frank Sinatra
show, while another, fictitious visitor named Hans comes
across far more seriously than the utterly absurd German TV report
on a Miss World competition held in a country gripped by
civil war. The end of the war and the ANC′s historical election
victory passed Sun City by, astonishingly leaving no trace. "Sunny
Land" is the exact opposite of a respectful documentary about a
dark place from South Africa′s past, working instead like a psychedelic
drug in filmic form, expanding consciousness in the
here and now.

Dorothee Wenner

Source: 60. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)