Event

Come Back Africa

New 35mm Print!

(Lionel Rogosin, USA, 1960, 35mm, 90 min) Combining documentary and fiction elements, and filmed clandestinely in the streets of Johannesburg, Come Back Africa creates an intimate portrait of the inhuman and violent Apartheid system. The film follows an itinerant Zulu family (including the debut of African singer Miriam Makeba) struggling to survive the quotidian racist indignities of life in the big city slums. A raw, immediate and excoriating political exposé, the film allies its outrage with narrative poignancy to produce an early, influential instance of the hybrid "docudrama" format. Unable to secure theatrical exhibition in the US, Rogosin founded the Bleecker Street Cinema in New York City to screen his film for American audiences. The film won the Italian Film Critics Award at Venice Film Festival in 1960.

"A timely and remarkable piece of cinema journalism: a matter-of-fact, horrifying study of life in the black depths of South African society. Filmed in secret in constant danger of arrest and deportation, Come Back Africa looks deep into the private nightmare and social desperation of a man and his people." Time Magazine