South African Movie Nights Again!

The first part of our South African movie program is already behind us. We are proud to announce that it has been a success. We have a dedicated and actively participating audience as well as beer. 

We spent a lot of time trying to come up with the next set of movies which would be as interesting as the previous ones. Lucky for us South African cinematography is rich and diverse. The problem is logistics. We leave for South Africa in the end of January and Christmas holidays are soon, which leaves with only two movies to show before our trip.

The first one is Olivier Schmitz’s movie Life, Above All. It was released in 2010 and was very well received by the critics. It is based on Allan Stratton's Chanda's Secrets and depicts a story of a 12 years old Chanda (Khomotso Manyaka) who after the death of her newly-born sister struggles with destruction of her family and, being alienated from the rural community due to a gossip. She decides to leave home and starts to seek for her mother. Life, Above All has made it to the January Shortlist for the Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film and was also present in Cannes Film Festival. The movie is dedicated to children orphaned by AIDS. It shows an incredible maturity and endurance of the main character as well as problems concerning rural South African community. The director was mostly appreciated for telling such a painful story without platitudes, while Khomotso Manyaka is said to have given an incredible and row performance.

The second movie is Disgrace. As you may suspect it is based on Nobel Prize winning novel of J.M. Coetzee. It is actually an Australian movie but it is set in post-apartheid South Africa. It was directed by Steve Jacobs and was released in 2008. David Lurie (John Malkovich) is an ageing professor teaching Romantic literature at a university in Cape Town.  David has an impulsive affair with one of his students and as a result he is brought before a disciplinary board and fired. He takes refuge with his daughter, Lucy (Jessica Haines), who owns a farm in the Eastern Cape. There they face a tragedy and struggle to cope with it. ‘Disgrace’ rises a lot of important questions concerning personal downfall, guilt, violence and post-apartheid South African reality. We all know how easy it is to flatten the best book by a bad adaptation but Jacobs’ Disgrace is a very faithful adaptation while Malkovich remains a compelling and cerebral screen presence. 

The venue is the same - Pub Van Gogh, ul. Żydowska 12, Poznań so see you there!