"At Thy Call"

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Brus
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"At Thy Call"

Postby Brus » 2013-06-27, 14:49

Interesting short film in Afrikaans (mostly) and English. The Afrikaans is subtitled in English.

The film it most reminds me of is "Full Metal Jacket", so if you don't like dark war movies, give it a pass. Good for learners to hear some naturally spoken Afrikaans, though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3-F4qZYJz4

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Shiba
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Re: "At Thy Call"

Postby Shiba » 2013-06-27, 16:19

Interesting find! I'm not really able to handle dark war movies so well, so I'm not going to try it, though, but thanks for the contribution. :D

The one issue I do have with the first few seconds I watched, is in the little paragraph at the beginning, about the apartheid government and the scars in the white men's minds due to harsh conditioning. Well... it kind of sounds as if the government was evil and used horrible methods to traumatise their soldiers, and furthermore, it doesn't really explain the reason why soldiers were necessary in the first place. That's not really historically accurate; the Border War was an extension of the Cold War (the Russians and Cubans more or less used Angola as a base), and South Africa's participation had nothing whatsoever to do with apartheid, but rather with its political alignment as being on the side of the West. It wasn't a white man's war either; there were black soldiers in the war, too; in fact, South Africa's ally, UNITA, was pretty much black.
As to the trauma, well, the army's training techniques were pretty much standard army stuff. I know plenty of people who went through the war and aren't any more traumatised than you would expect a soldier to be. The guys who came out really messed up were the "rekkies" - special forces guys, paratroopers, assassins, that kind of thing. And that's not because the Defence Force was evil, but because an army needs special forces, and special forces kill people up close and unexpectedly.
/end monologue

So... basically, I have something of an issue with information that misrepresents history. :P But that's not to say that the film itself is bad at all, and once again, thanks for contributing. Afrikaans films are pretty scarce, and I think being able to see and hear someone speak at the same time, as in a film, is probably the best way to learn a language, short of immersion.
Native: Afrikaans (af) English (en) || Intermediate: German (de) || Beginner: Some odd combination of Riksmål and Bokmål and whatever (no) || Learning on-and-off: Russian (ru) || Curious: Breton (br) Welsh (cy) Finnish (fi)
Korrigere feilene mine, vær så snill!

Die HERE is my herder; niks sal my ontbreek nie. ~ Psalm 23:1

Brus
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Re: "At Thy Call"

Postby Brus » 2013-06-27, 17:21

Noted.

The comments for the film on youtube (as well as for the trailer elsewhere on youtube) also dispute the historical accuracy of the film. They don't all agree with each other - some say antagonism between English- and Afrikaans-speakers in the film is overblown, some says it's true-to-life. (Maybe it varied between units?)

But all historical films should be viewed very critically anyway.

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Shiba
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Re: "At Thy Call"

Postby Shiba » 2013-06-27, 18:00

Good point.

I don't think there should have been much antagonism between Afrikaans and English speakers, though there might have been room for some. In general, Afrikaans and English speaking people have had fewer issues with each other than one would expect. They were intermarrying pretty much directly after the Boer War. However, I do know of some areas of the country where there was definite antagonism, even until the '60s. So, if you throw an English unit from Natal in next to an Afrikaans unit from the Free State ... if you've got a few hot-heads in both units, it wouldn't take much for the situation to get pretty heated. That wasn't the rule, though.
Native: Afrikaans (af) English (en) || Intermediate: German (de) || Beginner: Some odd combination of Riksmål and Bokmål and whatever (no) || Learning on-and-off: Russian (ru) || Curious: Breton (br) Welsh (cy) Finnish (fi)
Korrigere feilene mine, vær så snill!

Die HERE is my herder; niks sal my ontbreek nie. ~ Psalm 23:1


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