Premise: Four Iowa punk friends in their early 20s agree to see 100 shows that year, while also dealing with the ins and outs of their own personal lives and the wild world of 1984.
Sorry, no story so far. Working on research. But I'll post writing exercises, research, outlines, and whatnot. You can read my long treatment at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kCeqaT1Ug3zuEgjTeTTCby-1IJcreATvtH5tyAklFVM/edit?usp=sharing. Feel free to comment or make any suggestions.
Monday, March 29, 2021
Movie about punk rock in 70s South Africa and reviews on it (movie included)
The title to this movie is misleading. Except for towards the end when they do a quick run through the years and a couple of other countries, it doesn't cover punk throughout the years or even throughout Africa, which has and has had a very interesting punk scene. Two-thirds of more of the movie covers the punk in South Africa in the 70s.
But it does do good job of covering that part of punk history. But if you're expecting to see many black faces, you will be disappointed. Punk didn't spread to the black communities in Africa until the 80s and 90s.
But it is quite interesting hearing how these white South Africans learned about punk rock in a country with a very conservative government strong on censorship, and how they tried to start and promote a scene that was looked down upon and blocked in many ways.
Many articles are edited, but can be read at the link above them.
Three chords, three countries, one revolution...PUNK IN AFRICA is the story of the multiracial punk movement within the recent political and social upheavals experienced in three Southern African countries: South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
In 1976, as the Soweto Uprising was moving the anti-Apartheid struggle into a more militant stance, another revolution of sorts was starting in cities across South Africa. Inspired from abroad, but entirely filled with its own unique anger and outrage, punk rock exploded into a country where the Rolling Stones were banned from the radio. In their clothing and hairstyles, their lyrics and their decibel levels, these bands—with names such as Wild Youth, Gay Marines and National Wake—rocked the staid South African society with challenges to everything from censorship to lifestyles, and from religion to racism. Deon Maas and Keith Jones’ fascinating chronicle captures the development of what became a second front in the battle against the Apartheid state, while also looking at punk music in neighboring Zimbabwe and Mozambique and the role it’s playing in those societies today.
When you think punk, a few locations tend to come to mind- New York, London, LA. But Durban? Jo’Burg? South Africa? In this program, we are taking a trip to a time and a place where punk had a very different meaning, exploring the music and the legacy of the mixed race bands that challenged apartheid. Little known to the outside world, and often overlooked even within South Africa, groups like National Wake, The Genuines, and The Kalahari Surfers used music to articulate their disgust with the society around them, calling out the conformity, repression, and political hypocrisy that defined the apartheid era. As time went on and theory was put into practice, the music became increasingly adventurous, drawing from the full diversity of South Africa’s musical culture, and fusing it to the raw energy of punk. In doing so, they created a model that continues to inspire bands to the present day.
Identities were constructed and reduced to the color of one’s skin by the government during the apartheid-era in South Africa. The South African government recognized the power that music held in influencing audiences, so they began controlling the radio stations, stopping music from crossing at country boarders, and monitoring performance spaces. Steve Moni, a punk rocker from South Africa, said that his music “made people think. People weren’t used to thinking, people were used to waiting to be told what to do and waiting for permission.” Approximately the first hour of PUNK IN AFRICA documents musicians’ experiences using punk rock music as a political statement from the 1970s Apartheid-era to present day South Africa. The last twenty minutes are divided into a short section on Mozambican punk and another section on Zimbabwean punk music.
Beginning with bands from major cities, such as Suck from Johannesburg and Wild Youth from Durban, this documentary recounts the fears and uncertainties of performing such politically rebellious music in a time when politics cost people their lives. National Wake, a multi-racial punk rock band, was composed of two white men and two black South African men. One of the man recounts the story of their band for the other three who either disappeared or were killed after the band dissembled. In a touching moment in PUNK IN AFRICA, this member returns to Soweto to visit the family of the two late black South African brothers from National Wake. Without missing a beat, the documentary does not fail to include important historical information linked to place and space in South Africa. Soweto is recognized as the home to the Soweto Uprising when many of the school children protesting the use of English and Afrikaans in the classroom were killed and injured by the army.
While seeming tangentially related at first, the last two sections on Mozambican and Zimbabwean punk document the dispersion of punk throughout southern Africa. Providing a reversal of the situation in South Africa, the frustrations of trying to find a locale to perform at in Mozambique is still a common frustration for punk musicians in 340ml. The Rudimentals, “used to play music to conscientise people, to make people aware of what was happening in the country,” but refusing to be involved in a political system that abused human rights the members fled to South Africa to perform there. Once in South Africa, the Zimbabwean consulate in South Africa was foreclosed and the government made it nearly impossible for the lead singer to get his passport back. The struggles to perform music that refuses to conform to the injustices surrounding them in Zimbabwe and Mozambique mirrors the struggles in Apartheid South Africa, and by the end of the film the viewer realizes the close links between the punk music in each of these different southern African countries.
While this film focused mainly on racial issues within these punk groups, a discussion on gender in these bands was lacking. While two females were pictured in the bands, they were not interviewed and their presence was not acknowledged. Regardless, the ability for music to be used as a resistant force against government-enforced oppression and injustice is seen through various southern African punk music groups in PUNK IN AFRICA.
An interesting if accidental companion piece to recent docu hit “Searching for Sugar Man” — in which a U.S. musician unwittingly helped fuel anti-apartheid sentiments in 1970s South Africa — “Punk in Africa” chronicles the more overtly rebellious influence of punk music in that nation (and some neighboring ones) a few years later. This aptly raw, energetic survey of a very DIY scene should appeal to programmers looking for an arresting intersection of music, politics and underground culture.
The focus is primarily on South African bands that began springing up in the late ’70s, inspired by the punk movement elsewhere, though the pic notes that short-lived local metal band Suck set a model for anarchistic impudence several years earlier. Acts like Wild Youth, National Wake and Kalahari Surfers followed the lead of many hardcore ensembles abroad in offering ramalama rock with lyrical rants against the prevailing conservative regime.
Sassing Reagan and Thatcher was quite different from critiquing Botha’s white-supremacy government, however, and secret surveillance, police raids, harassment, the threat of prison, etc., were serious issues for these groups. Their increasingly multiracial makeup also led to mixing indigenous idioms with punk styles in a lively alternative music scene that survives today, long after apartheid’s fall. Organized geographically — chronicling punk activity in Durban, Johannesburg and other cities in South Africa — the pic moves on to more succinctly limn similar movements in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, where musical agitation against the powers that be retains varying levels of risk. Briefer still is an eye-blink peek at punk’s impact elsewhere on the continent.
Co-helmers Deon Maas and Keith Jones draw on a colorful array of interviewees — albeit one whose gender makeup suggests these particular punk scenes weren’t all that empowering for women — and a rich archive of videotaped performance footage.
No matter how you slice or dice it, no matter how much reggae or ska you sprinkle in the mix, punk rock is a white man’s gig. This documentary takes a look at the punk scene that sprung up in South Africa shortly after the British punks took over the late ’70s. Their influences were a hybrid of the local native music, the sounds of India and rare import 45’s. Apartheid was still in force as colonialism hung on to a rapidly shrinking ship, and like all times and all places, there was a disaffected youth ready to do something, anything, to defeat boredom. Defeating apartheid was as good a cause as any and while punk rock was a small force in its dissolution, it WAS on the right side of history.
Perhaps you’ve never heard of these bands: “suck” or “The Safari Suits” or “Screaming Foetus” but they were the headliners. Archival footage and present day interviews show a scene not unlike DC or Milwaukee or Portland: there were motivated skilled people who “got” the deal but resided in the obscurity of so many lost bands. Middle aged men now take us on a tour of clubs that are no more in places that went from creepy to gentrified; their baldness and white beards are signs of survival, not revolution. The footage is fun, but females and blacks are rare to non-existent and the message here is pure nostalgia. The scene has died away, the walls between black and white are partially down but at least no longer entrenched in law. And while this film claims to cover bands in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, the last two countries are mere afterthoughts.
The punk movement galvanized the youth of the ’70s, it was political, exciting, and technical skill was unnecessary. These bands are competent, yet none of them jump out sonically. As musicians, they are dedicated, committed, and likeable, and you can’t say they weren’t a positive force in the necessary social changes in South Africa. Did you miss any truly great bands? Maybe, but punk wasn’t about being great. It was about getting out and DOING it, and these guys DID it. They got beat up, arrested, drunk, high, and laid. Did you?
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