Lionel Rogosin’s 1959 powerful classic “Come Back, Africa” is one of the bravest and best of all political films. After witnessing firsthand the terrors of fascism as a soldier in World War II, Lionel Rogosin vowed to fight against it wherever and whenever he saw it reemerging. In an effort to expose “what people try to avoid seeing,” Rogosin travelled to South Africa and secretly filmed “Come Back, Africa”, which revealed the cruelty and injustice suffered by black and colored peoples under apartheid.
Before beginning the production of “Come Back, Africa”, Rogosin spent several months touring Africa, becoming accustomed to the way of life in South Africa and acquiring a sense of the apartheid government’s sensitivity to anti-government “conspiracies” — such as the very film he wished to create.
Much of “Come Back, Africa” was filmed in Sophiatown, a ghetto reserved for blacks and a vibrant center of music, art, literature and politics that has since become legendary. Residents included Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Father Trevor Huddleston, Hugh Masekela and three of the film’s main contributors – author/journalists Bloke Modisane and Can Themba and the already celebrated singer, Miriam Makeba. But even as they filmed, Sophiatown was already in the process of being demolished and its residents forcibly removed. Shortly after production ended, Sophiatown was emptied, razed and rebuilt as a whites-only suburb called Triumf.
(Milestone Films)
