Black History Month Film: "AMANDLA! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony"

A.N.S.W.E.R. Film Series
AMANDLA! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony
($6 donation)

"Song is what keeps us alive."
-- Lindiwe Zulu (Freedom Fighter)

The power of song to communicate, motivate, console, unite and, ultimately, beget change: that ideal, gloriously realized, lies at the heart of director Lee Hirsch's inspiring feature film documentary Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony. Amandla! tells the story of Black South African freedom music and reveals the central role it played in the long battle against apartheid. The first film to specifically consider the music that sustained and galvanized Black South Africans for more than 40 years, It is unlike any other film yet made on the subject of apartheid, and an electrically expressive portrait of South African life then and now.

To tell the story of this music, Amandla! turns to the people of South Africa itself. Among those featured in intimate interviews are the renowned musicians who helped expose the suffering of Black South Africa to the world, In addition to the songs themselves, Amandla! retrieves a stunning bounty of archive footage, some of it never before seen. Culled from a variety of sources, the footage describes the brutal arc of apartheid: the forced removals of Black South Africans to wretched, government-built townships; the institution of onerous pass laws; and the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. As the white government grew increasingly repressive and violent in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, freedom songs responded, urging the fight on. A new combination of dance and song, the toyi-toyi, became a potent weapon in taking on the police.
2002, 108 min, South Africa/USA