Reviews & Quotes

From The Toronto Star, Nov 1, 1990: Fighting Apartheid with Music by Antonia Zerbisias: “Documentaries about injustice usually make for heavy-going viewing. Atrocities pile up like so many bodies in mass graves. Songololo: Voices of Change is different. It’s not just another program about apartheid in South Africa; not just a litany of bannings, arrests and soldiers mowing down children. True, one of the first scenes we see is of a giant demonstration in Johannesburg- but the crowd is singing. Then we see the wonderful Gcina Mhlophe singing a joyful song against a spectacular landscape. Songololo is about political struggle and black resistance, but it does so with the most rapturous music.

From The Ottawa Citizen, Oct 31, 1990: Spirit of South Africa in film festival by Noel Taylor: “In Songololo, a centrepiece of this weekend’s second One World Film Festival, the spirit of black South Africa warms the screen. It resounds through the voice of performer Gcina Mhlophe who tells folk tales to children and the impassioned lines of People’s Poet Mzwakhe Mbuli to huge audiences that hang on his every word. The sound of Songololo is the beat of the drums, and the rustling of feet by dancers whose energy seems to create fresh physical limits. Visually it is illuminated by faces that bear little evidence of actual suffering, but a lot of determination.”

From the 1990 Vancouver International film festival program: “Songololo is an exceptional film in that it doesn’t focus on the problems of apartheid, but brings to light the emergence of a culture beyond apartheid and the artist’s role in the process. It is the first post-apartheid film to emerge from the new South Africa.”