Amandla!

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Dir. in person! AMANDLA! A REVOLUTION IN FOUR PART HARMONY won the Sundance Audience Award and an Emmy among other accolades when it was released. Director Lee Hirsch (BULLY) spent nearly a decade capturing the power of music in the anti-apartheid struggle. Today the film has extra poignancy after the passing of Nelson Mandela in December.

Reviewing the film for the Washington Post, Desson Thomson wrote:

“With admirable concision, AMANDLA! takes us through some milestones — or maybe millstones — of the struggle, as we listen to the songs that arose from them. There was the 1960 Sharpeville shooting of retreating, demonstrating blacks, of which 69 died; the imprisonment of activist Nelson Mandela; the Soweto Uprising in the mid-1970s; and the freedom and presidential investiture (and all-but coronation) of Mandela. It’s a rousing, bracing primer on the nation’s most crucial events….

“While you hear the richness of the South African music, from tribal to pop-tropical, you can learn about what happened through the sometimes rascally anecdotes of Masekela, Makeba and many others. What songs, what people and what a triumph that their music won in the end.”

• Country USA
• Rating NR
• Year 2003
• Running Time 108 minutes
• Director Lee Hirsch

IFC Center does not generally provide advisories about subject matter or potentially triggering content in films, as sensitivities vary from person to person. In addition to the synopses, trailers and other links on our website, further information about content and age-appropriateness for specific films can be found on Common Sense Media, IMDb and DoesTheDogDie.com as well as through general internet searches.