"The miracle of Lionel Rogosin's apartheid drama Come Back, Africa isn't that it's a solid, affecting artifact of a cruel society, but that it exists at all," begins Bill Weber in Slant. "In the wake of his debut film, the New York skid-row chronicle On the Bowery, Rogosin set out in 1957 for Johannesburg, and for months laid the groundwork for surreptitiously shooting a follow-up that would lay bare the pain and humiliations of black South Africans subjugated by the white majority, enlisting native writers Lewis Nkosi and Bloke Modisane to collaborate on the scenario. Mixing documentary-like footage with scripted scenes as he had in his first feature, the filmmaker heavily features music and dance by throngs of street performers, a diegetically captured salve for the wounds of extreme poverty and social oppression — and an ideal camouflage of his critical agenda from the South African authorities, who were persuaded that...
- 1/26/2012
- MUBI
Rediscover Lionel Rogosin's 1959 anti-apartheid masterpiece (which screened at Tff 2005) at Film Forum starting January 27. Miriam Makeba (Miriam) in the film Come Back, Africa. Behind Ms. Makeba from left to right: Morris Hugh, Zacharia Mgabi and Can Themba / courtesy Milestone Film and Video 'In South Africa when this film was made, you could not be buried in a cemetery unless you had the right papers. You could not live in a certain part of the city unless you had the right color. And you could not sleep with another person unless you were the same color. And it is that particular history that Lionel captured and it is a monument. Some monuments, like in your beautiful city, are carved in stone. And what you are proudly celebrating tonight is the fact that Lionel Rogosin was able to leave a monument in images of our history. Then, we were able ...
- 1/23/2012
- TribecaFilm.com
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