Punk in Africa

Credits

Name: Punk in Africa

Country: Südafrika; Tschechien

Year of publication: 2011

Format: Digital

Color: color

Language : OF m. dt. UT

Duration: 80 Minuten

Direction: Maas, Deon; Jones, Keith

Camera: Griffin, Gary Keith

Editing: Wills, Andrew

Sound: Chiles, Jonathan

Actor: Chibanga, Paulo; Fleck, Michael; Kadey, Ivan; Rose, Ruben; Sony, Warwick; Thomson, Lee

Abstract

Three chords, three countries, one revolution... The film is the story of the punk movement within the recent political and social upheavals experienced in South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. In these societies, the punksubculture represented a genuinely radical political impulse, playing out against a backdrop of intense political struggle, economic hardship and even civil war.
The film traces this until-now untold story from its roots in the  underground rock music of early 1970s Johannesburg, the first multi-racial punkbands formed in the wake of the Soweto Uprising and the militant anti-apartheid hardcore and post-punk bands of the 1980s to the rise of celebratory African-inspired skabands which sprang up from Cape Town to Maputo in the democratic era of the 1990s. Today, an emerging generation of bands continue to draw on this legacy to confront the political challenges of contemporary Zimbabwe and the uncertain identity issues of the Afrikaans minority in South Africa.
As one of the musicians in the film says: „The job of any punk band is to criticise the government, no matter who the government is.“

  Trailer