On the culture and politics of radical black theatre work in South Africa under apartheid, featuring Ingoapele Madingoane, Matsemela Manaka, Gibson Kente and the women of Crossroads

Filmed in 1980 at the height of the apartheid era in South Africa, this is an intimate look at black South Africans' cultural resistance to apartheid. Relying primarily on performances, I TALK ABOUT ME, I AM AFRICA reveals an exciting variety of theatrical forms and points-of-view.
The awakening of Black consciousness thanks to theatre : poetry, political songs, women theatre group, popular musical pieces portray pains, struggles, laughs of everyday life in the black ghettos.

A film by Chris Austin et Peter Chappell

South Africa | 1980 | documentary | 54'

I Talk About Me, I Am Africa from Chris Austin Film Archive on Vimeo.

A unique primary source document of South African theatre and cultural history on DVD, made from a new video master with restored audio and picture.
-In an illegal shantytown on the outskirts of Cape Town, the Crossroads Woman's Committee performs Imfuduso (Forced to Move), which dramatizes their ongoing battles with the police who are trying to demolish their homes and community.
-Playwright Gibson Kente's musical company (the most commercially successful black theater group of the time) tours ghetto halls in government-sanctioned performances of The Load.
-The James Mthoba Workshop presents John Ledwaba and Hamilton Silwane in Matsemala Manaka's Egoli (City of Gold). The two actors use mime and stark staging to suggest symbolic links between prisons and the gold mines beneath Johannesburg.
-And finally in a Soweto backyard the Mihloti Black Theatre with Ingoapele Madingoane present an illegal reading-accompanied by flutes and drums-of Madingoane's defiant, epic poem I Talk About Me, I Am Africa, one of the most evocative anthems of the era.

Subject areas:
Africa, Performing Arts, South Africa, Theater

Documentary film for BBC TV and WDR

REVIEWS

"A selective survey of different styles; it's a debate about cultural strategy; and most importantly it's a moving celebration." (Time Out)

"Compelling" (The Observer, London)

"This will have the impact that Lionel Rogosin's Come Back Africa had in its day" (The Sunday Times, London)

"An outstanding film" (Daily Express, London)

"This year has seen several exemplary offerings. High on the list must sit Chris Austin's two films" (Time Out, London)

"An extraordinarily exciting film... an astonishing revelation... a moving celebration of a growing form of resistance" (Time Out)