South Africa: The White Laager

Sathima's Windsong

Shot in New York, Cape Town, St Helena and the Atlantic Ocean, Sathima's Windsong, is a lyrical portrait of South African jazz singer, Sathima Bea Benjamin. In her Chelsea Hotel apartment, home for over thirty years, she patches together her journeys, from apartheid's 'pattern of brokenness', to a chance meeting and recording with Duke Ellington in Paris, to making a life in New York. The narrative of her journeys are inter-woven with her music and the musings of folks who know her work. Like her haunting song, Windsong, the film is a meditation on displacement, exile and belonging.

Nelson Mandela, Beyond the Myth

Mandela’s legend is built on his absence, during his 27- year incarceration. In 1990, when Nelson Mandela is released, South Africa is waiting for their Messiah. But he doesn’t know it yet, he is the most famous political prisoner of the Planet. Will he be up to the challenge?

Kentridge and Dumas in Conversation

William Kentridge and Marlene Dumas – two of the most celebrated names in international contemporary art – come face to face in a series of frank, witty and intense discussions about their work and practice. The film follows them from the gentle ambience of a dinner conversation, to their studios – where we are given insight into the way that each artist works – to some of their finished works and installations. What emerges is how very differently these two highly successful South African artists approach image making. Dumas’ method is deeply intuitive – she often works on the floor as though embracing her paintings, pouring and dabbing paint to produce her remarkable portraits. Kentridge is intensely systematic, alternating gestural mark making with the repetitive action of drawing-filming-erasing for his animated films.

Honey Badgers: Masters of Mayhem

This is one the most fearless animals in the world, renowned for its ability to confront grown lions, castrate charging buffalo, and shrug off the toxic defenses of stinging bees, scorpions, and snakes. Our film will follow a team of researchers in South Africa who are searching for the truth behind the honey badger

The Giant is Falling

The film documents the key political issues in recent years in South Africa that have marked the demise of the African National Congress (ANC). These include the Marikana massacre in August 2012, whereby 34 striking miners were gunned down by the ANC government's police force. Rehad Desai documented this historic event in his 2013 film MINERS SHOT DOWN. He refers to the incident once again in his latest film and shows how the ANC is undermining its close connections to the trade unions it set up as a freedom movement under Nelson Mandela, and how students have also turned on the party to protest against tuition fees under the motto #FeesMustFall. The film's compelling footage unmasks the cynical despotism of corrupt president Jacob Zuma, who is chiefly responsible for the ANC's demise and its catastrophic losses at the most recent elections. It also introduces opposition movements that are challenging his now-untenable position.

Labirint

Two halves split by the perseverance of a scorpion. Come on, feet.

Defending Brother No.2

Two Dutch lawyers, Michiel Pestman and Victor Koppe, travel to Cambodia in 2011 to defend Nuon Chea in an international tribunal. Nuon Chea, also known as Brother No. 2, was the second man after Pol Pot in the Khmer Rouge regime. He is being charged with mass murder and crimes against humanity. For four years, the documentary follows the lawyers in their attempt to give this man a fair trial, but the UN tribunal is beset by local interests and a government which consists partly of other former members of the Khmer Rouge who would really like all of the blame to rest solely on the defendant. What should've been the crowning achievement in the careers of the lawyers turns out very different.

Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire

The story of Canadian Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire and his controversial command of the United Nations mission to Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. The documentary was inspired by the book Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda which was published in 2003.

Black Pénélope

A discovery of the pictorial art that Ndebele women traditionally practice in South Africa: painting the walls of their houses.

Penguins Under Siege

The untold story of South Africa's blackfoot Penguins.

The African Penguin

The African penguin is the only penguin that lives on the African continent. It was known as the jackass penguin because of its donkey-like call. This film covers the life cycle of this incredible bird, fom mating to laying of eggs to hunting and the moulting cycle. Sadly, it also shows the stark reality of a bird on the road to extinction.

City Slickers: A tale of two African penguins

Fifteen years ago, a handful of African Penguins, normally found only on remote islands off the Southern African coast, stumbled across on of the Cape's most beautiful and popular tourist beaches. They swam, they saw, they conquered. And today, Boulders beach is home to more than 4,000 of these delightful, resourceful and entertaining seabirds who live side by side with their human neighbours -well, most of the time! These knee-high invaders not only share the beach, they dodge traffic, scale fences, and take over gardens, the golf course and even the occasional bedroom! For the two feathered stars, Henry and Margot, it's a tale of romance, the challenges of parenthood, separation and a penguin's worst nightmare, oil.

My Beloved Country

A provocative look from within at Afrikaner extremists who, in 1991, clung to the belief that they were the chosen ‘super race’ of Africa. With the demise of white rule, many of these Boers lived in fear. Some had banded into paramilitary groups, such as Eugene Terre’Blanche’s Afrikaner Resistance Movement, which claimed wide support within the South African army and police. They were preparing for an armed showdown with the new government.

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

Jazz and decolonization are intertwined in a powerful narrative that recounts one of the tensest episodes of the Cold War.

I'm Not Black, I'm Coloured: Identity Crisis at the Cape of Good Hope

In the wake of one of the worst social experiments in the history of mankind, 'I'm not Black, I'm Coloured' is one of the first documentary films to look at the legacy of Apartheid from the viewpoint of the Cape Coloured. A people who in 1994, embraced the concept of Desmond Tutu's all encompassing 'rainbow nation', but soon thereafter realized that freedom, privilege, economic growth and equality would not include them. A people who for more than 350 years has been disregarded, ignored, belittled, and stripped of anything they can call their own enduring a complex psychological oppression and identity crisis unparalleled in South African history.

Air Jaws Strikes Back

Air Jaws claims new turf in South Africa. Dr. Neil Hammershlag and Enrico Gennari follow with brand new technology: a "drone-towed" seal decoy to study and capture the harrowing and dramatic battles between shark and seal.

Life in Progress

Plaasmoorde: The Killing Fields

Included in this groundbreaking work are interviews with active farm attackers and serving police officers who confirm corrupt police are complicit in the mass‐slaughter of South Africa’s whites. Their truths are horrifying—a man and woman branded with hot irons and left to die. A husband killed in front of his wife and children. An elderly woman raped, another with half her face blown off from a shotgun. And they all share a common thread: revenge. This is a disturbing documentary—it wrought both an emotional and physical toll on all involved. What’s more, Katie was detained at the airport in South Africa on the orders of the African National Congress (ANC) for her work on this project because Plaasmoorde is the story—the truth—they don’t want you to see. We owe it to the victims—to our fellow man—to listen and to open our eyes to the truth.

The Last Horns Of Africa

Long a target for poachers, the rhino has been hunted for their horns across Africa. In The Last Horns of Africa, debut documentary feature director Garth De Bruno Austin follows those who are putting their lives on the line to protect the animal, from a hidden rhino orphanage to the Kruger National Park. With unparalleled access the filmmakers have created a compelling documentary that explores conservation, the illegal wildlife trade, and rhino poachers.

1985: Heroes among Ruins

"1985: Heroes among Ruins" is a reflection of disaster. It is about the human solidarity, the search and rescue and the importance of civil protection, but above all, the triumph of the people over devastation during the earthquake of September 19, 1985 in Mexico City and the one ocurred in September 19, 2017.