UMBANGO
(THE FEUD)
dir. Tonie van der Merwe, 1986
68 mins.
In Zulu with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9 – 10 PM
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16 – 10 PM
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25 – 10 PM

The 1986 western UMBANGO is a lovingly crafted spaghetti-style epic, and probably the most ambitious B-Scheme in this series; van der Merwe’s pulse-pounding closeups on hands gripping revolvers and eyes squinting in harsh desert sunlight demonstrate him as a keen student of filmmakers like John Sturges and Sergio Leone. Such as it is, the plot follows a ruthless cowboy-businessman with a Hitler moustache named Kay Kay, who wages total war on two drifters named Jet and Owen after mistakenly accusing them of killing his brother. The two friends – heretofore inoffensive cowpokes – must defend themselves against KK’s cadre, but at what cost? Like Moustapha Alassane’s 1966 short film THE RETURN OF THE ADVENTURER – wherein a young African man returns to his home village with a trunk full of gallon hats, leather chaps, pistols and bandanas, upending centuries-old tribal dynamics in a few broad Western strokes – UMBANGO plays like a dispatch from another world.