South Africa
Mandela: Long Walk to FreedomThursday, 02 January 2014
It took the last 16 years of Nelson Mandela’s life, almost to the day, to bring his autobiography to the screen. South African producer Anant Singh eventually handed Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom to British director Justin Chadwick and screenwriter... Read more... |
Listed: The Many Faces of Nelson MandelaSaturday, 14 December 2013
Nelson Mandela had a nose for the dramatic gesture. The evidence is there in his speech at the Rivonia Trial in 1964, in his symbolic walk to freedom as he emerged on foot from captivity in 1990, his astute performance at the Rugby World Cup in 1995... Read more... |
'I photographed Nelson Mandela'Friday, 06 December 2013
In 1997 I was in South Africa working on Truth and Lies, my book about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, when the New York Times Magazine said that they were doing a major feature on Mandela. He’d been in office for three years. The... Read more... |
The Island, Young Vic TheatreWednesday, 13 November 2013
This near-legendary short play, devised by Athol Fugard with the actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona (who gave their names to its characters), was first shown in Cape Town in 1973, during the apartheid era. Its effect then must have been electric,... Read more... |
The Dead Wait, Park TheatreSaturday, 09 November 2013
A single movement is all it takes. A wounded man is held at gunpoint, and instead of cringing away from the inevitable bullet, he lifts his head and looks his would-be executioner in eye. This simple gesture does not just save his life – it... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: National Wake, DrugstoreSunday, 06 October 2013
National Wake: A Walk in Africa 1979–81South Africa’s National Wake would be noteworthy enough even if their music wasn’t. The mixed-race group emerged in 1978 in a country where the establishment and institutions were directly opposed to what... Read more... |
DVD: Beware of Mr. BakerFriday, 26 July 2013
Few real-life subjects of a film would allow themselves to be seen in the way Ginger Baker is in Beware of Mr. Baker. He’s violent, bullying, self obsessed, a control freak, irresponsible, sexist, foul-mouthed and harbours decades-long grudges.... Read more... |
Mies Julie, Riverside StudiosTuesday, 12 March 2013
Snow flurries outside, steam heat within. Writer-director Yael Farber’s transposition of Strindberg from a 19th-century Swedish estate to a contemporary farm in South Africa’s Karoo region on the eve of a storm is so painstakingly evocative that all... Read more... |
DVD: Searching for Sugar ManSunday, 23 December 2012
Thanks first to a David Holmes cover version then to some recent reissues of his records, I knew the approximate story of Detroit singer-songwriter Sixto Rodriguez. Roughly speaking: intelligent but borderline down-and-out Detroit musician is... Read more... |
LFF 2012: Beware of Mr BakerMonday, 15 October 2012
In case you doubted the title, the great Cream drummer Ginger Baker breaks director Jay Bulger’s nose with a crack of his walking stick, after Bulger’s lived at his subject’s South African ranch for four months. Like a zoo-keeper thinking for a... Read more... |
DVD: BeautyTuesday, 09 October 2012
There’s little beauty of any conventional kind in this tale of the hidden queer - "gay" would have associations of a very different world - life of South African patriarch François (Deon Lotz) imploding. He falls for Christian (Charlie Keegan... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe: Tam o' Shanter/Trevor Noah/Bridget ChristieMonday, 20 August 2012
Tam o' Shanter, Assembly Hall ****Scottish schoolchildren are brought up on Robert Burns but other British students aren't so fortunate. We may know snatches of the great man's work – “Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie”, “O, my Luve's... Read more... |
