Let My People Go

Boesman and Lena

Freedom Railway


Freedom Railway

Marigolds in August

Marigolds in August

Marigolds in August

Stephen Peet (looking towards camera) and crew on
location in Swaziland

Mattaka Buys a Motor Car

Stephen Peet filming in Northern Rhodesia
(now Zambia) in the early fifties

Luangwa Safari

Stephen Peet and crew filming in Swaziland

ABAPUCIWE - THE DISPOSSESSED (1980, Colour)
The story of the South African Government's Bantustan policy. How 6 million Africans were moved from their homes in and around the cities and dumped in remote arid lands nominally designated their "homeland".

BEHIND THE LINES ( 1971, Colour)
This was the first filmed report of what liberation from the Portuguese meant to the Africans of Mozambique. Both guerrillas and local leaders are interviewed.

BOESMAN AND LENA (1973, Colour)
A feature film, scripted by Athol Fugard, about the banal horrors of apartheid.

CHIKIN BIZNIS (2002, Colour) Director: Ntshaveni Wa Luruli
Chikin Biznis is a humorous tribute to the vibrant South African informal economic sector, which provides millions of unemployed urban South Africans with an alternative livelihood.

CHIMURENGA - THE WAR IN ZIMBABWE (Colour, 1977)
Shot at the height of Zimbabwe's war for liberation and independence, the film-makers interviewed young men both in Zimbabwe and in a transit camp in Botswana.

CHOOSING EXILE (2000, Colour) Director: Mark Radomsky
Filmmaker Marc Radomsky is a third-generation South African. After his grandfather emigrated from Lithuania, the family established their roots in Johannesburg and prospered. However, growing lawlessness and crime in South Africa has seen the white community hole up in gated communities where armed guards, attack dogs and barbed wire are the norm. In order to escape the ever-increasing violence Marc and his wife Vivienne made the painful decision to emigrate to Australia. Their close-knit family, threatened with separation, tries to prevail upon the couple to reconsider, and the camera captures the painful unravelling of their interconnected lives.

FREEDOM RAILWAY (1974, Colour)
The Tan-Zam railway links Dar-es-Salaam on the Indian Ocean to Kapiri Mposhi in the heart of the Zambian copperbelt. Felix Greene spent two months filming its construction - over 1900 kilometres through jungles, over mountains and across swamps and rivers.

THE FURIOSIS (2001, Colour) Director: Liza Key
A fascinating and moving examination of Dimitri Tsafendas, the man who entered South Africa’s parliament building one day in 1966 and stabbed the Prime Minister, Hendrik Verwoerd, to death

THE GUEST (1977, Colour) Director: Ross Devenish
Another collaboration between director Ross Devenish and writer Athol Fugard. The film is based on an episode in a biography of the Afrikaner intellectual and poet Eugene Marais.

LET MY PEOPLE GO (1961, Black-and-white)
A powerful and convincing argument against apartheid. It describes through newsreels and enacted materials what the system meant to the majority of South Africans.

MARIGOLDS IN AUGUST (1979, Colour)
Another collaboration between scriptwriter and actor Athol Fugard, and director Ross Devenish. A feature film about the lives of rural blacks under apartheid.

PENNY WHISTLE BOYS (1961, Black-and-white)
Three young lads support their impoverished families by playing music to passers-by in the streets of Cape Town. The film follows them, capturing their spontaneous gaiety and vitality.

YOU HAVE STRUCK A ROCK! (1981, Colour)
Using a collage of rare photographs and newsreel footage, as well as interviews, this film explores the contribution of women to the overthrow of apartheid.

THE FILMS OF STEPHEN PEET
Stephen Peet has been a documentary film maker for over 40 years. He started out in the forties as director-cameraman, and spent seven years in what is now Zambia and Malawi, making information films with local people for local consumption. We have many of these in our library. They contain a wealth of fascinating footage of Southern and Central Africa in the fifties and sixties. Please e-mail us for more details.

OTHER MATERIAL
We have a wide variety of footage from South Africa, mainly, but not exclusively, covering the struggle against apartheid. There is also material from Senegal and other parts of Africa including:

• Footage of the Imperial Airways Flying Boat taking off from the Zambezi River above the Falls, on its final flight.
• Records of Coronation Day as celebrated in a small outpost in the Eastern Province of Northern Rhodesia with a police parade and the arrival of the district administrator in full colonial regalia.

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Choosing Exile director Mark Radomsky