For more information about the film, go to www.amandla.com.

We are a spiritual people, and the way that we express the spirit is through song. One of the ways that Africans feel closer to his or her creator is through song. –Duma Ka Ndlovu

They banned virtually everything, but how do you stop people from singing?—Manala Manazini

This is not a story of victims, but of heroes.—Sherry Simpson Dean

Nearly ten years in the making, Amandla! not only recounts the experience of struggle and eventual triumph, but is itself the triumphant result of a great deal of struggle and vision. Director Lee Hirsch, a young American from Long Island, first became fascinated with South African music while still in high school. One of his friends was an exiled South African, who told him about the anti-apartheid struggle and taught him freedom songs. Upon completing his studies at New York Film Academy, Hirsch decided to make a film about these songs.

He hooked up with Sherry Simpson, a young African-American, who had worked as an intern with Representative Mickey Leland, Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, mainly on issues related to South Africa. Simpson became the film’s producer, helping Hirsch develop the concept of the film and focusing on the arduous task of raising funds and finding backers. As is usual with independent filmmaking, the latter was the most difficult part of the process.

However, the delays over funding had positive side-effects for the project. Hirsch moved to the Republic of South Africa, where he directed music videos for a number of artists, including TKZee and Bongo Maffin (receiving the National Television and Video Association’s Avanti Award for Best Video of the Year for the latter’s video). He also served as the South African-based producer for the CNN Worldbeat one-hour special on South African music. During this period he got to know a number of musicians, activists, and veterans of the struggle, and came to a much deeper understanding of the liberation movement. By the time the funding came through and he was able to show up with his cameras and crew, he had established a comfort level with them that caused them to really open up. And what had initially been conceived as a little documentary showing people in the streets singing freedom songs became an extremely powerful and insightful film in which the music—while remaining the focus—becomes the gateway into spirit of the struggle, and perhaps the key to its eventual triumph.

* * *

The film’s title comes from the Xhosa word for "Power." It was used as a rallying cry during the struggle, meaning "Power to the People!" In this sense, it was also the name of the cultural arm of the ANC (the African National Congress).

The filmmakers ultimately found their unifying device for the film in the person of

Vuyisile Mini, a political activist considered the greatest composer of freedom songs in South African history. One of his most famous songs was "Beware, Verwoerd!" directed at the former Minister of Native Affairs and father of the Apartheid system of racial separation and repression. The song is upbeat in tone, but ominous in its underlying message: the Black Man will have his day. Mini was arrested and hanged (he went to the gallows singing) by the South African government iin 1964. His body was thrown in a pauper’s grave, whose location was withheld from his family. The removal and reburial of his body—together with the resurrection of his significance for the people of South Africa—becomes the films framing device and spiritual reference point.

We are introduced to a number of formerly exiled musicians, famous around the world for their art, their advocacy, and their loyalty. Famed trumpeter Hugh Masakela (best known in the West for "Grazing in the Grass," but beloved within South Africa for his song "Mandela: Bring Him Back Home") tells a heartrending story of standing alone in New York’s Central Park after decades of exile, forcing himself to speak Zulu aloud, terrified at the realization that he was starting to dream in English. Miriam Makeba, "Mama Africa of Song," was banned from returning to the country in 1960; with tears in her eyes she tells us how her daughter died in exile. Veteran jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim (who recently composed the award-winning score for the film Chocolat), fills the film both with haunting piano lines and with deeply beautiful comments: e.g., "The thing that saved us was the music. So the music was . . . it’s not even what we call liberation music. It was part of liberating ourselves."

We also meet venerable artists little known outside of South Africa. Dolly Rathebe (who was featured in two films at our Eleventh Festival—Jim Goes to Jo’Burg and Dolly and the Inkspots) and the powerful vocalist and actress Sophie Mgcina appear several times in the film to share songs and memories; the most delightful is their rendition of "Let’s Go to Meadowlands," another deceptively cheerful-sounding song whose lyrics—in a language unknown to their white oppressors—speak of oppression and the need for action.

Activists and former underground soldiers tell us just how important music was both in making the regime more bearable and in building community to fight it. There is the beautiful hymn Nkosi Sikelel’I Africa (The People’s Anthem), which the government unsuccessfully attempted to ban. There is the powerful chant, "Senzenina" ("What have we done?"), sung repeatedly in the 70s, compelling individuals to question their own lack of action. There is Toyi-Toyi, the combination song/dance/march so prevalent in demonstrations that became a visual representation of the resistance movement. "Song," says the eloquent playwright and historian Duma Ka Ndlovu, "permeated the cracks of the repression." Or, in the word of Abdullah Ibrahim that became the film’s subtitle, "This was the only revolution in the world that was done in 4-Part Harmony."

* * *

Editing of the more than 200 hours of interviews, along with the performances and archival footage, took more than a year. It was not entirely completed when the film was accepted for screening at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. However, before they would take the film to the Festival, the filmmakers felt that Amandla! needed a test sceening before an African audience. They decided to show a rough cut of the film in South Africa two weeks before Sundance, and promised themselves that if the response was not good, they would pull it from the Festival. However, the reaction among the South Africans in attendance was overwhelmingly positive, with the audience alternately singing and in tears. The film of course was shown at Sundance, and went on to win the Audience Award for Best Documentary and the Freedom of Expression award. It would eventually win two awards at South African film festivals as well, and many others around the world.

We can only concur with the enthusiastic words of musician Dave Matthews, whose independent ATO Records has produced a wonderful soundtrack for the film: "This documentary is a marvel, an extraordinary achievement. Not one person should miss this film. Not one."

Return to CFAF14 Resources.