Dark and Lovely, Soft and Free (2000)

• 66%
• 2000
• Documentary
• Graeme Reid
• Paulo Alberton

Dark and Lovely, Soft and Free follows a network of queer hairstylists and their friends through small towns, rural areas, and urban peripheries in South Africa. A project of the Gay and Lesbian Archives of South Africa, the 2000 film was linked to co-director Graeme Reid's doctoral research on hair salons as gay social and cultural spaces. Presenter Zakhi Radebe travels thousands of miles through the provinces of Gauteng, Mpumalanga, the Free State, the Eastern Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal. On this road trip they and the audience meet stylists who are also preachers, chorists, traditional healers, beauty queens, and socialites. Through them, viewers discover the creative possibilities for creating queer spaces in the South African countryside. The documentary provides a vision of acceptance and celebration, in contrast to the dominant homophobia in much of sub-Saharan Africa.