Sathima's Windsong
In this film, which is shot in New York and Cape Town, the life history of South African-born jazz singer, Sathima Bea Benjamin, unfolds through her own reflections and reminiscence, which are woven together with the music she has created and with the reflections of five people who know her work and the milieu which shaped it. In her flat in the Chelsea Hotel in New York, where she has lived for thirty two years, Sathima patches together her journeys, literal and figurative, from Apartheid South Africa and 'the pattern of brokenness' from which she hailed, to Europe and a chance meeting and recording with Duke Ellington, to starting afresh and setting up her own record company in New York. The film is a celebration of Sathima's work and a meditation on jazz and diaspora. As it moves back and forth between Cape Town and New York, to the lyrics and rhythm of her music, it becomes, much like the title of her haunting song, Windsong, a reflection on history, time and place; on Apartheid, anti-Apartheid and their legacies, as well as the passionate questions of memory, displacement and belonging.
via youtube.com