Patrick Ndlovu Movies
- 1997
This comedy, a British/South African co-production, takes place in Johannesburg in the post-apartheid era, and it follows six characters once culturally separated under the old regime, but now struggling to deal with each other under the new and more enlightened government. All working class, each of the six South Africans have their own issues to deal with as the once-divided nation learns to live with freedom and equality. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Whoopi Goldberg stars in this musical take on the South African struggles against Apartheid in the mid-1970s, during the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. An adaptation of Mbongeni Ngema's popular musical, which ran on Broadway from 1988 to 1989, Sarafina! recounts the political coming of age of the title character, a high school girl involved in the Soweto student protests of 1976. At first just a petulant bundle of energy, more interested in boys than civil rights, Sarafina (Leleti Khumalo) learns of the Afrikaaner oppression through the underground lectures of her teacher, Mary Masembuko (Goldberg). Sarafina's mother, who works as a servant in a white household and never sees her children, urges Sarafina to toe the line. But she can no longer turn a blind eye when the government imprisons her teacher and slaughters her would-be boyfriend during an arson protest. Incited to rebellion, the students kill a crooked black constable, leaving Sarafina to wrestle with their decision to use violence against the government's strictures. Ever tightening its grip, the ruling regime would kill 575 blacks over eight months in an attempt to quell the civil unrest. The sober subject matter is leavened by Ngema's jubilant songs and Michael Peters' electric choreography. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Leleti Khumalo, Whoopi Goldberg, (more)
- 1991
- PG
Advertised as a comedy in the style of The Gods Must Be Crazy, the crime farce Oddball Hall bears little actual resemblance to that film but for the fact that it is set in a remote African village and centers on cross-cultural differences between the natives and a quartet of jewel thieves who have been hiding out for a few years waiting for the cops to give up their search so they can fence their loot and move to Rio. The crooks are allowed to stay because they have convinced the people that they are members of the fraternal order, Oddball Hall and have magical powers. These powers are put to the test when a naive native youth, the son of a chieftain shows up and they mistake him for the real leader of the Oddballs. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
