Sarafina returns to the big screen tomorrow
Spira Tlhankane | Thursday June 15, 2017 18:00
Sarafina, which was popular in the 1990s, will be screened at cinemas at Riverwalk, Masa and Game City from 11am to 8.30pm.
New Capitol Cinemas is working with Video Vision in order to bring the film to the public for free. They have also arranged that interested schools have showings for their students.
The movie was released in 1992, with Khumalo reprising her role as Sarafina following the musical success of its namesake. Sarafina is a young student who is motivated by her teacher (Goldberg) to aspire for the best in life.
As she comes of age in the 1970s, she opens her eyes after considering lessons of her teacher who didn’t follow the curriculum stipulated by the oppressive whites of South Africa. In the 1970s, the language of Afrikaans alongside English was made compulsory as a medium of instruction in schools in 1974 and black students later challenged this in June 1976.
The movie has been reissued at various International Film Festivals in the past decades and will forever carry the message of the struggle and inspire young people to stand up for themselves.
The movie contains scenes of South African soldiers, black and white, shooting to death some school children and relives 1976’s real moments of the June 16 when the student uprising began in Soweto and its spread countrywide.
The incidents that triggered the uprising were caused by policies of the Apartheid government at the time and it changed the socio-political landscape not only in South Africa but Africa as a whole.
Tomorrow’s free screening will give people who have never seen it a chance to visualise the plight of the uprising that became a widespread revolt against the apartheid government. For those who have long watched the movie in the 1990s as children, it will provide a chance to relive those moments when the movie was watched on the white cloth projector screens.