Sea Point Days

Asia Pacific Premiere

The Sea Point Promenade, a small strip of land wedged between the Atlantic Ocean and Signal Hill in Cape Town, with at its centre popular public swimming pools, used to be a prime example of Apartheid’s ‘whites only’ policy. These days, it is a place where people of every race, religion and sexual orientation seem to come together in harmony.

Verster’s documentary takes a closer look at some of the people that live in this place: the community of white elderly people, the homeless sleeping on the beeches, the councilmen and community watch group that want to clean up the streets. It becomes evident quite soon that this community is far from perfect, underlined by night cameras showing the crime and violence on the streets.

Using largely cinematic vignettes the film explores issues of belonging, integration, nostalgia, happiness and identity in an ex-white South African neighbourhood. Sea Point Days shows us a new type of economic segregation slowly emerging around the Sea Point Promenade as division between the unwanted homeless and the favoured rich. Does apartheid still rear its ugly head in a new guise?