The Struggle for South Africa
April 13, 2010 · 1 Comment
“Have You Heard from Johannesburg?,” an eight and a half-hour, seven part film series by acclaimed director Connie Field about the global movement against Apartheid starts a two-week run at the Film Forum in Manhattan tomorrow. (At Film Forum the films will be screened in blocks of two or three.) Topics include the international sports boycott, the sanctions campaign, mass struggles inside South Africa, and the neglected role of Oliver Tambo, who was the ANC President for much of the second half of the 20th century, in retellings of that struggle. I probably won’t get to see it. I hope it gets to be shown on television here. I would definitely buy it on DVD.
The successful methods of this movement still needs to be studied. And film is a good aid to get conversations going. This also needs to be required viewing in South Africa where young black kids have little sense of history (I suggest asking your own or a neighbor’s child) and some whites now claim Apartheid was actually equality, or worse just an experiment that went bad and anyway they said sorry already, or that political freedom have made victims out of them.
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Categories: film
Tagged: Apartheid, Connie Field, Have you heard from Johannesburg?, Nelson Mandela, South Africa, whites
ekapa // April 13, 2010 at 11:56 am |
I saw the documentary at the London Film Festival last October and it is brilliant, meticulously researched and detailed almost to the point of obsession in a very good way. The seven part format, where each film stands on its own, allows for a well nuanced study of each facet and avoids the flattening and glossing over that usually resuls from the panoramic sweep of such large projects.
It’s available on dvd from Clarity Films.