Radio technician Ricardo Martinez left his home and family in the 1950s to join Castro’s forces fighting to overthrow the Batista regime and remained committed to the revolution. His daughter Miriam, disillusioned by modern Cuba, abandons her homeland to begin anew in America. Frei trails Miriam as she takes leave of friends and family, capturing
Shot in Nambia, Sweden and England, River of Memory documents Himba leaders’ moving and eloquent protests against the building of a hydropower dam on their land along the Cunene River, bordering Namibia and Angola. Arresting images of the river explore landscapes that will be lost should the building of the dam go ahead. Questions about
Documentary quest for the truth about the legend of the African boxing champion from the twenties.
Beverley Ditsie is a feisty lesbian activist from Soweto; Simon Nkoli was a hero of the struggle against Apartheid—who also happened to be gay. This is the story of their tireless battle against prejudice in any form, an effort which played a pivotal role in ensuring constitutional protection of gay rights. The film also explores
Rather than succumb to despair in a neighbourhood so poor that their children often have to go hungry, the fisherwomen of Ocean View, near Cape Town, brave the dangers of the sea to put some food on the table. Through a series of intimate interviews, the film takes viewers into the hearts and minds of
Blackness is probed in many of its manifestations as the director travels from the US to Tanzania, and on to Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, to find out what it means to be black. A heartfelt quest for identity leads him to conclude that being black and the descendant of slaves makes Catholic Brazil—“a New World
A whacky take on the geography of Apartheid in Cape Town. Using the Black River as both metaphor and embodiment of separation and displacement, Edwards constructs poetic tableaux of water and sound to convey how the city’s musical traditions, often markers of ethnic identity, reinforce the ghettoisation of culture or serve to bring people together.
The ups and downs of the independent English-language newspaper The Daily Nation in Kenya.
A harrowing account of the recent spate of baby rapes that has shocked South Africa and the world. The film opens with a dramatic reconstruction of events surrounding the rape of 9-month-old “Baby Tshepang” in the Northern Cape. Interviews with wrongfully accused suspects and distraught relatives who want mob justice paint a devastating portrait of
The turbulent tale of Indonesia’s political and economic crisis in the late 1990s that forced President Suharto to resign after 32 years is told through the eyes of a 60-year-old woman and her two sons. The youngest can’t hold down a job and, according to his brother, is wasting his life on gambling, pigeon races
The Furiosus explores the tortured story of Dimitri Tsafendas, assassin of Hendrik Verwoerd. Declared by a judge to be a madman—‘a Furiosus’ in Roman law—Tsafendas spent 28 years on death row. Produced as if giving evidence before the TRC, the director becomes the attorney in the trial that never was, arguing that Tsafendas had raged
Our synopsis in 2001: Debuted as a work in progress at Encounters 1999, we are pleased to screen the completed multi-award-winning feature. The San are widely acknowledged to be the oldest inhabitants of southern Africa, with an unbroken link to their ancestors who have lived in the same region for over 30,000 years. The film
This is the story of an ambush. At 5 am on 3rd March 1986, police surrounded Crossroads in Guguletu, Cape Town, as ‘terrorists’ planned to attack the 7.25 am police bus. However, the bus safely passes, the terrorists are sighted and, in as many minutes, seven young men lie dead. Ten years later, the tale
The Hunt is the first documentary to explore, from the inside, the increasingly secretive, complex and fascinating world of English foxhunting set against the background of public outcry for the banning of this blood sport. The film follows the Ludlow Hunt in middle England over a full season. Never before has a film crew been
The tale of Sara Baartman should be known to every South African. For it is a story that distils the audacity of European racism and is an accessible and moving account of her life. Sara was a Khoi-Khoi woman, born in the Cape in 1790, who at the age of 20 was taken to London
The Long Journey of Clement Zulu is a powerful documentary following the release of three men from Robben Island, revealing their transformative experiences in a changing South Africa. It pays tribute to overlooked heroes and challenges media stereotypes of political prisoners.
Escaped convict, war hero, media manager, mystic visionary—Khozh-Ahmed Koukhaev is the very modern model of a major Mafia don. Twenty-five years ago in Moscow, he founded an underground movement that became the cradle of the Chenchen liberation movement. Today, amidst the ruins of Grozny, he rides in an armoured Mercedes dressed in expensive Italian suits.
This must-see movie takes us to the lush Caribbean island of Mustique, the late Princess Margaret’s hideaway, and gives us a glimpse into the arcane mental meanderings of Lord Glenconnor. The riotously eccentric aristocrat bought the island back in the 1960s and was instrumental in turning it into a playground for the jet set of
Offering the same pointed critique of his Caribbean homeland as he made of Britain in the series White Tribe, Darcus Howe asks what the former colonies have done with the independence for which they fought. “I left the Caribbean as a colony, and I’ve come back to look at it in a serious political way
This remarkable video greeting project—in which messages from Mozambican refugees living in South Africa were recorded and then shown to relatives in remote villages back home—offers a unique glimpse into the lives of families torn apart by war and economic necessity. Mothers learn of sons who have passed away, wives discover their husbands have taken
In a career spanning two decades, James Nachtwey has relentlessly scoured the globe to capture and publicise not only the horrors of war, poverty and starvation, but also the poignancy of human grief, the small triumphs and feats of endurance which sometimes dignifies the most terrible suffering. Frei’s documentary takes one on a haunting odyssey
A documentary about the lives of italian workers in the after-WW2 Switzerland.
Is a wedding about a triumph of optimism over experience? As Stuart and Anna prepare to tie the knot, their families and friends brood on the current state of their own relationships. For some, matrimony is no cause for celebration. Paul Watson unearths what is going through the minds of the people attending a church
At last! An intelligent and more-than-creative documentary on life behind large banking corporations. Imbach gets to the heartbeat of what it means to work in a high-tech, high-powered industry with this devastatingly articulate and innovative work. Well Done cuts directly to the subtext of working life: as the tirade of statistics, numbers, deadlines are punctuated