Black Butterflies

In 2001, the equally turbulent and tragic life of the South-African poet Ingrid Jonker was the subject of the documentary Korreltjie niks is my dood. This time, it is the basis for a biopic with international ambitions. In the Netherlands, she is not widely known, but in her native country Nelson Mandela saw to it that the memory of Jonker’s modest oeuvre was kept alive. The focus of Black Butterflies does not lie so much on her literary qualities or poetic protest against the abuses of apartheid, but concentrates more on the woman behind the artist. Hers is a stratified role: liberated and zesty, but also destructive, given to drink and unmanageable. In the 1960s, Jonker is caught, as it were, between two men: the kindred spirit Jack Cope, a writer she has a passionate affair with, and her tyrannical, ultraconservative father who is deeply troubled by her looseness and political bias.