Documentary Educational Resources - Geography / Africa / South Africa / All Films

dancedance/RE♦VOLUTION

Tue, 9 Oct 2018 15:11:00 GMT

dancedance/RE♦VOLUTION
Buy Now: $125.00

dancedance/RE♦VOLUTION is an introduction to the vibrant diversity of contemporary dance in South Africa. Rooted in both tradition and the idioms of modern movement, this half-hour documentary introduces new audiences to work ranging from site-specific solos to multi-media physical theater.

The struggle for freedom is ongoing in post-apartheid South Africa. Dancemakers are discovering new opportunities and new language to address issues of race and gender, utilizing fresh approaches grounded in history, memory and personal identity.

Featured Choreographers:

Gregory Maqoma — Headlined the American Dance Festival 2015 with his solo Exit/Exist
Jay Pather — Choreographer of Firebird, which was performed at the Hollywood BowlOscar Buthelezi — First African choreographer to win the prestigious Kurt Jooss Prize for Choreography
Lliane Loots — Founder of JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience, Artistic Director Flatfoot Dance Company
Mzo Gasa — Founder and director of the Sibonelo Dance Project
Athena Mazarakis — Silver Standard Bank Ovation Award for "elev(i)ate2" at the NationalArts Festival, South Africa

“South Africans are a nation who dance ... and revolutions need beauty.”— Lliane Loots, Choreograper

SCREENINGS & AWARDS

The Big Muddy Film Festival, Southern IL University, 2018

LA Dance Film Festival, Los Angeles, 2018

InShadow - Lisbon ScreenDance Festival, 2017

Videodança São Carlos, Brazil, 2017

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First Film

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:53:00 GMT

First Film
Buy Now: $340.00

First Film was edited and narrated by Lorna Marshall and is comprised of footage shot in 1951 on the second Marshall family expedition to the Kalahari Desert. It is intimate in style, very carefully filmed, with a wealth of practical information about the material culture and structure of Ju/'hoan (!Kung Bushmen) hunter-gatherer society. The film allows viewers to see some of John Marshall's earliest film footage and provides an interesting comparison with the more sophisticated shooting found in his later work.

This film is part of the !Kung Series.

Orthography Note
The group of people depicted in these films are the Ju/'hoansi, speakers of the Ju/'hoan language. Ju/'hoan is part of the !Kung language group; the term !Kung was previously used by the Marshall family and others to refer to Ju/'hoansi. Although the term is outdated, it has been retained here for the sake of consistency with John Marshall's previously published work. The films and their related printed materials also employ antiquated spellings of names and places. For current Ju/'hoan orthography, please see the Ju/'hoan - English Dictionary, compiled by Patrick Dickens and the Ju/'hoan Peoples Literacy Committee.

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In God's Places

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 12:44:00 GMT

In God's Places
Buy Now: $320.00

Iindawo Zikathixo – In God's Places traces the cultural legacy of the indigenous San (Bushmen) people in south-eastern Africa as it was shaped by the migration and interaction with Bantu and European peoples. Filmed in the Drakensburg Mountains in the Transkei, as well as in Lesotho and the northeastern Cape, the film features the indigenous rock art as a background against which the story of the Bushmen unfolds.

Bushmen hunter-gatherers were the first people to inhabit the southern African landscape. For thousands of years, they migrated over the Drakensberg foothills, following the wild animals they hunted and painted. Iindawo Zikathixo explores the cultural interaction that developed between the Bushmen, Xhosa and Sotho-speaking peoples, and exposes the merciless force with which European settlers dispossessed the Bushmen of their hunting and gathering grounds. Some aspects of Bushmen culture survived the genocide, and Iindawo Zikathixo investigates these through music, dance, oral history and traditional rituals in remote communities and those that intermarried with San and absorbed their cultural practices.

A central location of the film is the Inxu River Valley in the former Transkei, where the last known Bushman rock artist, Lindiso, lived, painted and made rain for the Xhosa-speaking Mpondomise until about 1930. The filmmakers visit Lindiso's painted shelter with his grandson, Maqulana and with Sipani Togu, an Mpondomise diviner of Bushman descent. Mr. Togu conducts rainmaking and other rituals he associates with the Bushmen in the painted rockshelters of the Inxu Valley.

Iindawo Zikathixo offers a snapshot of the persistence of Bushmen expressive forms and practices and will be of interest to all those concerned with southern African cultural heritage.

[Note: although some people featured in this film are shown touching rock art, this occurs in the traditional or ritual contexts and is not usually acceptable because touching damages the paintings. In the interests of conserving rock art, visitors to painted shelters are advised not to touch the rock art under any circumstances.]

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Pull Ourselves Up or Die Out

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 10:58:00 GMT

Pull Ourselves Up or Die Out
Buy Now: $295.00

This video, shot between 1980-1984, was an outgrowth of research conducted by John Marshall and Claire Ritchie during those years. Intended to raise awareness about issues facing Ju/'hoansi, Pull Ourselves Up or Die Out explores: problems and issues due to the shift from subsistence to a cash-based economy; the possible establishment of a game reserve in Eastern Bushmanland; development of subsistence agriculture by Ju/'hoan groups; and confrontations with South African Administration officials regarding the rights to install a water pump and the rights of Ju/'hoansi to access water.

Part of the !Kung Series.

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Roots of African Culture

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 08:59:00 GMT

Roots of African Culture
Buy Now: $295.00

"This is very important for us. Not only to engage and for the reconstruction of the historical past, but also for our national heritage." — Professor Yonah Seleti

Historical revisionism and propaganda were important elements of apartheid ideology, proclaiming that black peoples were not the owners of Southern Africa by stating that the whites arrived in the same areas at nearly the same time. Today, a crucial objective of South African education is to erase this interpretation as presented in earlier textbooks, and to give their students a genuine history of their country.

Roots of African Culture, a video produced by the University of Natal, is an indispensable pedagogical tool for this purpose. Recording the teaching process of Professors Jeff Guy, Leonard van Schalkwyk, Haskell Greenfield, and Yonah Seleti, this video depicts the entire process through which students are enabled to rediscover the history of Africa. Examples of falsified apartheid literature are juxtaposed against the fieldwork evidence that shows evidence of the first South African settlements, in existence well before the arrival of European populations in Natal area in 1652.

Under the supervision of experts, students participate in archaeological excavations in Northern KwaZulu-Natal, between "historic" Natal and the Zulu Kingdom, where African communities lived in the Iron Age. The entire process of excavation of a site is described and carried out. The process of "Carbon 14 dating" is explained.

Through this concrete and delightful academic experience students are finally able to affirm the existence of African farming communities during the 8th century.

Suitable for African Studies, archaeology, anthropology, history, and educational practice.

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A South African Farm

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 07:45:00 GMT

A South African Farm
Buy Now: $320.00

After a five-year absence from South Africa, filmmaker Paul Laufer returned to his country to film a microcosm of a society in turmoil, a society in which whites are driven by fears of loss of privilege, and blacks are torn between the material benefits of white "Protection" and the desire to be free from oppression.

On the farm of Laufer's godfather in South Africa's eastern highlands, black workers enjoy fairly decent living conditions. The godfather, a Czech emigre, has even built a school, although black pupils must walk for miles while white youngsters take a bus to their school in town.

Made during the final years of apartheid, the film offers insight into the everyday workings of apartheid, and the perspectives of blacks and whites caught in the system. A South African Farm allows us to meet and to listen to the voices of diverse men and women: the farm foreman, the butcher, the cook and her husband, an unemployed man still living on the farm, the Indian shopkeeper, a youth in the army, a teacher and a school principal, and the godfather, who reflects upon black/white relations while collecting mushrooms or playing pool. The black people on the farm express opinions about homelands, dependency, and the quality of life. The overwhelming impression, however, is of wariness and silencing: the power of this film lies in what is not - what cannot be - said.

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Tracks Across Sand

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 08:57:00 GMT

Tracks Across Sand
Buy Now: $395.00

In sixteen chapters containing four and a half hours of materials, Tracks Across Sand offers a unique chance to travel to the edge of the Kalahari, to a struggle for indigenous rights, and into the heart of contemporary South Africa. Driven from their lands, forced into a life of destitution, and denied the right even to speak their own languages, the ‡Khomani San fight for their heritage.

Culled from over 130 hours of video recorded between 1996 and 2010, Tracks presents a unique record of the ‡Khomani San, bringing together the story of Africa's first Bushman claim, from preparation through to ten years after the claim was granted. Seen through the eyes and told in the words of the ‡Khomani San themselves, this film chronicles the struggle for indigenous rights by a people who are defying a history that has attempted and failed to make them disappear.

The contents of this interactive DVD set include not only the extraordinary video shot over the course of the project, but archival photos, maps, family trees, stories, segments on Bushman language, and interviews with people outside of the San community who were instrumental in the claim and community building. As an added attraction, the disk also holds a photo gallery of the film's participants which can be downloaded and shared within San communities.

The ‡Khomani San of South Africa speak for themselves; and they also speak for the many, many people like them, who are struggling to have their voices heard and their human rights recognized. Tracks Across Sand is above all a record of a remarkable time and remarkable people — and may be the only record anywhere in the world of a land claim over such a span of time, from dream to retrospect ten years after settlement.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

RAI International Festival of Ethnographic Film, 2013

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Born Into Struggle

Thu, 26 Jul 2018 09:36:00 GMT

Born Into Struggle
Buy Now: $320.00

Filmmaker Rehad Desai takes us on an intimate journey mapped out by the scars etched into his family's life from having a father who was intensely involved in politics. Barney Desai was a political hero during South Africa's struggle for freedom, yet as a father he was damagingly absent emotionally. Rehad spent most of his young life in exile and became politically active himself. On this intensely personal journey into his past, Rehad realizes he is following in his fathers footsteps as he reviews his relationship with his own estranged teenage son.

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Art Films by Rina Sherman

Wed, 18 Jul 2018 13:31:00 GMT

Art Films by Rina Sherman
Buy Now: $295.00

Rina Sherman, a classical musician by training, turned to performance art and filmmaking in 1983, a year before she was exiled from South Africa and settled in France. She was a founding member of the performance art group, Possession Arts, in Johannesburg in 1983. Her early films show a strong performance art influence and her musical background has continued to be present in her work.

In Chicken Movie. Cluck! she included reality and elements of everyday life in her work for the first time. In a way, the film pre-empts her meeting with Jean Rouch upon her arrival in France; she made the film after happening on the following idea by Rouch: "It is more interesting to film reality as evoked by my presence (and the camera) than to pretend to be able to film it as is." The idea that there is no objective reality but only POV, motivated Rina to meet Jean Rouch, and some months later, he showed the film at the Cinémathèque saying: "This is a fresh voice; this is the kind of film we should be making today." Rina took his comment as carte blanche and subsequently invited Jean Rouch to act in two of her films, An Egg With No Shell and M. M. les locataires (Ladies and Gentlemen, the Boarders), a film about life in the Paris suburb of Noisy-le-Sec.

This DVD includes three short films:

Antics of the Artists (1983)

In and around the pool, an array of creatures move about. A scene of the famous novel "Seven Days at the Silbersteins" by Etienne Leroux to the music of Peter Klatzow, "Still-life with Moonbeams".

Chicken Movie. Cluck! (1984)An urban poem, in which a chauffeur drives his Madam about in downtown Johannesburg; visits to friends, townships, wastelands. The trip ends with a nuptial-funeral ball where the men dance to the cock's crow and the rhythm of Zulu music. The film captures a certain Zeitgeist of the city of Johannesburg during the period of state of emergency in South Africa.

An Egg With No Shell (1992)A male diva sings in a countertenor voice while massacring chickens brought to him by his butler, Jean Rouch, until a slave provides proof of his love for the chicken, which he has tucked under his arm. A film-opera based on a poem and musical theme by Rina Sherman.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Rina Sherman Retrospective, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, 2011

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Aftertaste

Wed, 18 Jul 2018 13:30:00 GMT

Aftertaste
Buy Now: $295.00

Wine has been made in the Western Cape region of South Africa for over 300 years. At first, slaves and indigenous Khoisan worked the vineyards owned by white European settlers. Classified as “Coloureds,” the descendants of these laborers have continued to work these vineyards for generations. Until recently, they could not own the houses they lived in, and were paid for their labor partly in alcohol. This instituted form of abuse – called the dop system – was designed by wine farm owners to encourage alcohol dependency in their workers so that they would not leave the farm to look for work elsewhere.

Almost a decade has now passed since the end of Apartheid in South Africa. The demands of economic globalization and pressure from the new South African government for evidence of reform have led the wine industry to look for new ways of organizing labor on the wine farms. This documentary film focuses on two wine farms where “empowerment” projects have recently been started in response to these calls for change. The wine farm workers receive part of the profits from the sale of “empowerment” brand wine Winds of Change. They have used this money to buy their own houses and shares in the wine farm business. On the surface, these “empowerment” projects seem to be a radical departure from the abusive, paternalistic labor relationship between farm owners and workers that has existed for so long. But the legacy of centuries of abuse cannot be eradicated overnight.

This film is an exploration of what life is like – and how life has or hasn’t changed – for several workers who live and work on these wine farms in the midst of a transition. A mix of observational footage and personal testimonies, the film tells an optimistic – but realistic – story about life and change in the new South Africa.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Award of Commendation, Society for Visual Anthropology Film Festival, Atlanta, 2004

Honorable Mention, EarthVision Film Festival, California, 2004

10th RAI International Festival of Ethnographic Film, London, 2005

African Studies Association Annual Meeting, Washington DC, 2005

2nd Cambridge African Film Festival, Trinity College, Cambridge University, UK, 2003

Forte! Harvard Office for the Arts event, Sanders Theater, 2003

Northeastern Anthropological Association Film Festival, Burlington, Vermont, 2003

Sasà International Film Awards, Italy, 2004

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