Come Back, Africa
May 06 - May 12, 2011
(Lionel Rogosin, USA, 1960, 35mm, 90 min)
New 35mm Print!
Combining documentary and fiction elements, and filmed clandestinely in the streets of Johannesburg, Come Back Africa creates an intimate portrait of the inhuman and violent Apartheid system. The film follows an itinerant Zulu family (including the debut of African singer Miriam Makeba) struggling to survive the quotidian racist indignities of life in the big city slums. A raw, immediate and excoriating political exposé, the film allies its outrage with narrative poignancy to produce an early, influential instance of the hybrid "docudrama" format. Unable to secure theatrical exhibition in the US, Rogosin founded the Bleecker Street Cinema in New York City to screen his film for American audiences. The film won the Italian Film Critics Award at Venice Film Festival in 1960.
"An invaluable document of life in a South African township in the late 1950’s. The street scenes are marvelous, with do-wop groups performing Elvis Presley songs while police keep a sharp eye out for some infraction of the law so they can break up the merriment. There are many scenes that allow the people to be themselves, and on these occasions the audiences becomes a privileged eavesdropper on a world about which little was known." —Seattle Post Globe
“A timely and remarkable piece of cinema journalism: a matter-of-fact, horrifying study of life in the black depths of South African society. Filmed in secret in constant danger of arrest and deportation, Come Back Africa looks deep into the private nightmare and social desperation of a man and his people.” —Time Magazine
**See Mama Africa, a new documentary about Miriam Makeba, at SIFF 2011!**