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AMANDLA! A REVOLUTION IN FOUR-PART HARMONY

Winner of the Freedom of Expression and Audience Awards last year at Sundance, Lee Hirsch’s lively and absorbing documentary chronicles the history of the anti-apartheid movement through its music. Starting with the forced evacuation of blacks from Sophiatown to Meadowlands in the 1950s, the film moves through the riots and killings of the ’60s and ’70s and on to Mandela’s landslide presidential victory in 1994, interspersing archival footage with performances and interviews from singers, activists, and poets, some of them exiled for decades, including pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, singer Miriam Makeba, and trumpeter Hugh Masekela. The songs of Vuyisile Mini, a singer/activist slain in 1963, are a cornerstone of the soundscape, which is artfully woven together by Gary Rydstrom (Saving Private Ryan). Gut-wrenching one moment, uplifting the next, and richly photographed, Amandla! is hard to fault. (108 minutes)

BY PEG ALOI

Issue Date: March 20 - 27, 2003
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