Miriam Makeba

An investigative reporter becomes entangled in deadly intrigue when she is assigned to get the story of the presidential candidate, and her job is complicated by a string of political assassinations and attempts.Read More »

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Staged in Algiers, the first Pan-African Cultural Festival was a momentous event, bringing together musicians and dancers from throughout the continent with many first-worlders joining in the jams. It was a moment of great postcolonial jubilation as representatives of national liberation movements converged on an Algeria that had gained its independence just seven years earlier. This energetic doc includes such luminaries of the moment as Amilcar Cabral, a writer who led the struggle in Guinea-Bissau; Miriam Makeba, the great African singer who was then married to Stokely Carmichael; Houari Boumédienne, Algeria’s military dictator; Stanislas Adotevi, the Benin philosopher who penned Negritude and Negrologists; and Eldridge Cleaver, who was living in Algiers, overseeing the Black Panther contingent at the festival. Klein’s coverage captures the astounding cultural mix, but also the militant resolve that permeated the gathering, making agit-appropriate correlations to the United States and its own colonial misadventure, the Vietnam War.Read More »

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In 1958, Rogosin tackled the subject of Apartheid by filming the pioneering “Come Back Africa” on location in Johannesburg, unbeknownst to South African authorities who believed Rogosin was filming a benign musical travelogue. The film focuses on the tragic story of a Zulu family trying desperately to stay together and survive. Instead, they are caught up in the contradictory laws of Apartheid. Bringing together some of South Africa’s best known radical intellectuals Rogosin shot the film combining documentary footage and fiction. Come Back Africa is an indictment on the brutality which the system created. It was selected by Time Magazine as” one of the Ten Best Pictures of 1960” and launched the career of the unknown Miriam Makeba. “I’m a political filmmaker, and the effect of the film on people who see it is still strong today as when I made it” said Rogosin.Read More »