Leiden | Saturday June 5 | 11.00 hrs
Introduction by Peter J. Pels, professor in the anthropology of Africa
De Voortrekkers
Africa´s first motion picture studio was established in Killarney, a suburb of Johannesburg. One of its earliest productions was De Voortrekkers. Shot in 1916, it was the first film to run longer than an hour. The film is a fictionalized account of one of the cornerstones of Afrikaner historical ideology – The Great Trek of the Boer people across South Africa and the Battle of Blood River, a consequence of the death of the Voortrekker leader Piet Retief at the hands of Zulu chief Dingane in 1838. The film shows the Afrikaner going up against ‘savage’ Zulu hordes.South Africa´s first grand cinema epic is the country´s equivalent of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. The film premiered on December 16th, 1916 and was screened annually for the next 40 years as part of the thanksgiving ceremonies surrounding the defeat of the Zulu nation at Blood River.
Harold M. Shaw (USA) | South Africa | 1916 | 60 min | silent with English intertitles
Leiden | Saturday June 5 | 14.00 hrs
Introduction by Peter J. Pels, professor in the anthropology of Africa
The Rose of Rhodesia
The Rose of Rhodesia was rediscovered in Germany and restored by the former Filmmuseum (now part of the Eye Film Institute Netherlands) in the Netherlands. It is one of a series of films produced by African Film Productions, a company started up in 1915 by US American insurance millionaire I.W. Schlesinger in Killarney, now a shopping centre in Johannesburg. Schlesinger recruited fellow-American Harold Shaw, who directed De Voortrekkers in 1916 before he shot The Rose of Rhodesia. The film is the product of a company culture that seems far less burdened by the consequences of the color bar than was common in South Africa at the time: its black hero Mofti and his white counterpart portray an unusually harmonious relationship, comparable to the positive side of the ‘Zuluology’ of the cinema that can also be discerned in other products of African Film Productions between 1915 and 1921 – but also in the ‘fake Zulus’ filmed by D. W. Griffith some years earlier. The Rose of Rhodesia, however, was directed by someone who strongly believed that African films must use African scenery and African actors in order to appeal to audiences overseas, and who thereby helped to produce what were probably some of the first African film stars in cinematic history.
Harold M. Shaw (USA) | South Africa | 1918 | 81 min | silent with German intertitles, English translation provided | score by Matti Bye
