City Of God Themes

Through Four Corners, we need to understand how the film references City of God, and how the two films are portraying Africanism. However, I need to make it clear that City of God was not an African film. It was made and produced in Brazil. On the other hand, Four Corners was made and produced in South Africa. My approach on these two films through understanding elements of Africanism in them is on their storylines which are centred on black kids roaming the streets in search of money, power, and social status, the use of teenage characters and themes (crime and drugs).

Crime is the recurring theme in both Four Corners and City of God. In Four Corners we see the use of young boys (12-15 years old) in crime-related activities. Gasant constantly

Music and/or sounds have the power to tell the story, music can act as an important theme in the story, for example, in Tsotsi; the use of the soundtrack by Vusi Mahlasela becomes a crucial motive to understanding the story. The same thing goes for Four Corners. One of the most used soundtracks in the story is Awe Four Corners. This is a single track from the album called Four Corners. This song was inspired by the film and it was produced by J-Beatz and Markus Wormstorm, Four Corners composer. The song is sung in English, Kaapse Afrikaans and Xhosa. The most important thing about this son in relation to the context of the story and the context of this paper is that it picks up on the undertones of hope and survival of young people in the modern-day South Africa. Evan Milton (2014:1), music journalist for Rolling Stones and Mail & Guardian gives credit to the song and the composer by writing

Twisted, tweaked and helped reinvent South African electronica – and this time with Cape Flats and vernac hip hop. But he hasn’t just scalped the symbols and patois of the Western Cape’s proudly indigenous ghetto style and used that as a vehicle for his own tunes. Instead, he’s collaborated with rhymes and producers and added his own inimitable hints of dark compressed danger to music. Look from one corner, and this is dubstep ripped from its European origins and slapped into a vibrant Mzansi form. Look from another corner, and this is the next inevitable evolution of Kasi and Flat music-making. The best part? We’ve got South African musicians using the fact that the country is making better and better movies, to make better and better