USA,
1999, 95 min
Shown in 2000
CREDITS
- dir
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Frances Reid, Deborah Hoffman
- prod
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Frances Reid
- cam
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Ezra Jwili, Frances Reid
- editor
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Deborah Hoffmann
- source
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Seventh Art Releasing, 7551 Sunset Blvd. Suite 104, Los Angeles, CA 90046. FAX: 323-845-4717. EMAIL: seventhart@earthlink.net
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COMMENTS
Frances Reid, Deborah Hoffman in person.
OTHER
With apartheid over and scars seemingly too deep to heal, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was convened as a forum for confession, confrontation and closure. In a country where the political and the personal cannot be separated, the TRC marked an enlightened and unprecedented experiment in national transformation—both for perpetrators and victims. East Bay filmmakers Frances Reid and Deborah Hoffmann made eight trips to South Africa over a three-year period to record four high-profile amnesty cases as they unfolded. Each petition represented not only an enormous tragedy but also an opportunity for the victim’s family—and for the country—to forgive and move forward. The legacy of Amy Biehl, an American exchange student and anti-apartheid campaigner who was slain in a random act of anti-white township violence, is captured in the remarkable meeting between her parents and her killer’s mother. But the wives of the Cradock Four (political activists coldly murdered by security police) and the mothers of the Guguletu 7 (a group of young black men who were infiltrated, set up and ambushed) have a harder time relinquishing their pain and anger, as do the Afrikaners who lost family when Magoo’s Bar (a pub frequented by security police) was bombed. This powerhouse documentary takes an unforgettable journey into the deepest moral quandaries.
—Michael Fox
FACTOID #1
The Festival has screened many debuts, both short- and feature-length, by some of cinema’s most influential artists including Juan Antonio Bardem, Jane Campion, Roman Polanski, Melvin Van Peebles and Lina Wertmüller.
