The other night I went to watch a second documentary at the Encounters Documentary Festival, The Bridget Jones Phenomenon in SA. It was interesting because it tackled a very real problem which is that there is a large number of single over 30 women in SA (there are also many guys in the same boat). The documentary was made by a woman and looked at the lives of 4 women in Cape Town. It was definitely aimed at women.
I found that it barely scratched the surface of the topic which was very disappointing. They came to the conclusion that men are unwilling to commit and that when that is sorted out everything will be fine. I don’t think that is true. I think we know that men (and I don’t even agree with this entirely) are unwilling to commit, the question that needs to be asked is why? There are a number of reasons why and looking at these would make for an interesting documentary.
I know a lot of single over 30 men who would be happy to commit, but can’t find a girl they want to commit to. This is a problem which affects men and women and I think that this documentary is a good introduction to the problem, but needs to be followed up with a whole series which looks at the different reason for the problem. I’ll offer my opinions and suggestions on those in my next post.