SENZENI-NA
Portia Rankoane
SOUTH AFRICA, 2006, 52 minutes
"Heroes are not born, but are products of struggle."
Soweto-born filmmaker Portia Rankoane was thirteen in 1976. Her hero was Tsietsi Mashinini, the 19-year-old leader of the student uprisings that brought Soweto to a standstill and launched the final 18-year phase of the struggle to end Apartheid. Courageous and articulate, Tsietsi became a symbol of the black consciousness movement. Rankoane's film explores the movement's roots and questions why today's youth know so little about the man who led the charge.
Mashinini was exiled twice-first by the Apartheid government which sought to arrest him, and then by his comrades in the student movement, after he left South Africa to marry a Liberian beauty whom they perceived as bourgeois. He didn't really believe his friends' threats to oust him from his position of leadership, and their rejection devastated him. The marriage did not last, and the young man who had shown so much promise ultimately died alone in poverty in Nigeria.
Mashinini remains largely forgotten by history and by South Africans themselves. In a search to uncover how his family feels about this oversight, the filmmakers have found Mashinini's widow, now living in Maryland. SENZENI-NA includes the first-ever account on film of his tragic life from the perspective of the woman he once loved.
-Patricia Finneran
DIRECTOR BIO
Portia Rankoane is a filmmaker, poet and photographer who has directed two films. The much-acclaimed 26-minute A RED RIBBON AROUND MY HOUSE, about an HIV+ mother and her daughter, received the Special Jury prize at the Zanzibar International Film Festival. THE AWAKENING OF THE LAKES, her second film, is a ten minute poetic short filmed in Switzerland in 2002. In addition to showing her photographs in numerous group exhibitions, Rankoane has published a book of poetry called Moment of Truth, and an anthology of short stories Like House On Fire.
Print Source:
Dan Jawitz
Vox Pix
Suite 256, Pvt Bag X9
Melville South Africa 2109
+27.11.403.3835
dan@voxpix.net
6/16 at 1:30 PM
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