Mapantsula (1988) | | Director: Thomas Mogotlane & Oliver Schmitz. Production Co. David Hannay Productions. Production Country: South Africa.
Format: 35mm, DVD, VHS. 104 minutes. Color
| | Distributor Descriptions: Panic in the streets, the shantytowns and the shopping malls of Johannesburg. Panic is a small-time crook who keeps his nose out of politics. Politics, however, touches everyone on Johannesburg?s streets in the late-eighties, as Panic discovers when he is picked up by the police for questioning and dumped in a cell with township militants, the sort of people he most despises and fears. Panic then begins his journey towards being politicised by default, but we are wisely left to consider his future in our imagination. Instead Schmitz and Mogotlane get inside the skin of a skuzzy but not unlikable criminal. Rough and ready, this hugely influential film that was initially banned in South Africa, gets far closer to the sights, sounds, smells and rhythms of Soweto than the international white liberal conscience movies of the time such as CRY FREEDOM and A WORLD APART. (From Film Resource Unit)
http://www.fru.co.za/synop.php?id=622
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A movie about Panic in the streets. The streets are those of the suburbs, townships, and shopping malls of Johannesburg and Soweto, and Panic is a small time crook who keeps his nose out of politics. The trouble is that politics touches everyone on the streets of Jo’burg as students riot in Soweto. Panic is picked up by the police for questioning and dumped in a cell with a bunch of township militants, the people he most despises and fears. We see his transformation from irresponsible loner to someone compelled to take a stand. It won seven South African film awards, but was originally banned here.
(From African Studies Library)
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'Mapantsula' was the first anti-apartheid feature film by, for and about black South Africans. Filmed inside Soweto, scored to the urban beat of "Township Jive," 'Mapantsula' has been called a South African 'The Harder They Come.'
'Mapantsula' tells the story of Panic, a petty gangster who inevitably becomes caught up in the growing anti-apartheid struggle and has to choose between individual gain and a united stand against the system. 'Mapantsula' will give viewers an insider's tour of township life and a foretaste of the vibrant popular cinema promised by the new, democratic South Africa. (From California newsreel)
http://www.newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0058 | | Country: South Africa | | Languages: Narration Afrikaans, English, Sotho, Xhosa, Zulu. Subtitles English. Speech Afrikaans, English, Sotho, Zulu. | | Audience: Adult, Graduate, Undergraduate | | Genre: drama, feature | | Specific Subjects: apartheid/anti-apartheid, development, liberation movements, media, personal, politics/government, social, stereotypes/images | | Synopsis: 'Mapantsula' is a feature film set within the mapantsula or tsotsi subculture of South Africa. The film precedes through a series of flashbacks, experienced by Panic, the film's protagonist, as he sits in jail. | | Reviews: Click Here | Distributor Info:
| University of Cape Town African Studies Library
University of Cape Town
Private Bag
Rondebosch, Wes 7701 South Africa
Phone: +27 (021) 650-3107
Fax: +27 (021) 689-7568
Email: asl@uctlib.uct.ac.za
Website(s): http://www.lib.uct.ac.za/asl/
Notes:
| Holds a library copy of the video but is not a video distributor. |
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| Film Resource Unit
P.O Box
11065
Johannesburg, 2000 SOUTH AFRICA
Phone: +27 11 403 8416/71
Fax: +27 11 403 8474
Email: wiseman@fru.co.za
Website(s): http://www.fru.co.za/
Notes:
| Prices in South African Rand |
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| California Newsreel: Library of African Cinema (Sale and Rent)
500 Third Street
Suite 505
San Francisco, CA 94107 USA
Phone: 415-284-7800, ext.
Fax: (415-284-7801
Email: cm@newsreel.org
Website(s): http://www.newsreel.org
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| Bowdoin College Library
3000 College Station
Bowdoin College
Brunswick ME 04011
Phone: (207) 725-3280
Website(s): http://library.bowdoin.edu/
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| | Record updated: 2009-10-07 15:36:11 |
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