Martin Botha's Four Corners: Classical Hollywood Cinema

Martin Botha (2012) looks at the South African film history and the past. Botha criticises the many highly creative uses of cinematic forms, styles, and genres as set against South Africa’s cinematic experience (three Act structure film, a clear protagonist, and antagonist, clear turning points, causal-chain effect and appeal to international audiences) that have been normalised by the West. Due to western technical requirements for African cinemas, aesthetic principles originating in African cultures have not found sufficient relevance in films; as a result, indigenization of cinema becomes impossible (Papaioannou. 2009). The western technological requirements for the African cinemas prevent African cinemas for being social and political …show more content…
These characters are the protagonist and the antagonist. They both drive the story. The audience gets to know the story through them. One of them must have a goal and the other one must constitute obstacles for the other to achieve the goals. In Four Corners, it is clear that the protagonist is Ricardo. His primary goal is to take part in the chess competition. The antagonist is the 26s gang leader, Ghesant. He keeps throwing obstacles in Ricardo’s way, he makes him play gambling chess games, which he loses and he must rob a supermarket so that he can pay him. He forces him to kill his father. In City of God the protagonist is Rocket. He has a primary goal of being a photographer. However, in City of God, things are different, the antagonist is not a human being; it is the location. The location in which Rocket grows up is a very powerful antagonist that prevents him from achieving his goal; the crime that takes place in the Favela takes part in the location that Rocket grows up in. The drug syndicates that Rocket grows up experiencing are all part of the location. All these are the character traits of the