Photographs by Lidio Cipriani in Cape Town

From 14 Aug 2011 to 29 Apr 2012

15 August 2011-30 April 2012. This exhibition, organized in collaboration with the Italian Institute of Culture, displays a series of photographs by the controversial Italian anthropologist, Lidio Cipriani (1892–1962). Cipriani took these images in 1927 during the shooting of the film Siliva Zulu, the first film in South African cinematic history, near Eshowe in KwaZulu-Natal. This is the first film in which the leading actors and supporting cast were all African. The Italian director, Attilio Gatti, employed Cipriani as his advisor on Zulu culture, to produce a story that combined romantic love, betrayal and witchcraft with elements of indigenous rural life. Cipriani’s photographs depict traditional characters in Zululand, later captioned and presented by Cipriani as authentic ethnographic documentation. Cipriani also investigated on forms of colonial representation, scientific racism and Fascist ideology.