Come
Back, Africa: The Films Of Lionel Rogosin, Volume II
(1959 - 1970/Milestone Blu-ray)
Picture:
Come
Back, Africa:
A; Black
Roots:
B- Sound: Come
Back, Africa:
A; Black
Roots:
C Extras: A Films: A
Apartheid
in South Africa officially ended in 1994, and yet 20-plus years later
it's impossible to watch Come
Back, Africa,
Lionel Rogosin's 1959 docu-narrative of the nation and its
institutionalized racism, as a dispatch from the long-ago past.
Rather, it's as urgent in its outrage, disgust, and activism today as
it was more than 55 years ago.
After
shooting On
the Bowery
(reviewed elsewhere on this site), a film concerned with the
disregard toward and disposability of New York's homeless population,
Rogosin turned his attention to South Africa's decade-old policy of
apartheid. It was a topic perfect for a filmmaker whose
social-justice streak was many miles long: National race-based
policies aimed at grinding its black population into dust through
inhumane treatment, savage segregation, and an unending barrage of
everyday indignities.
Like
his previous feature, Rogosin made Come
Back, Africa
on location using non-professional actors. In this case, we follow
Zachariah, a laborer from the country who dreams of working in the
city and providing a better life for, and with, his wife and
children. He bounces from one job to the next and confronts
increasingly despicable treatment, from both whites and blacks. The
experience Zachariah has with whites is brutal. When he lands a
domestic job, for example, the woman of the house changes his name to
Jack, complains about him to her husband as if he's not there (even
though he's standing next to her), her husband waves the complaints
away saying ''He's only a native,'' and when the wife refers to
Zachariah disparagingly as a 'native' she spits the word out like its
poison, before graduating to screaming ''savage'' at him. As the
film progresses, Zachariah is fired from one job after another over
seemingly inconsequential offenses, threatened with expulsion from
the city, and finally arrested in the middle of the night without
cause.
But
as nasty as these experiences are, Zachariah finds little quarter
from members of his own community. He has a group of friends he
leans on when times are tough, but they barely protect him from a
local thug who, after a perceived slight, tries to stab Zachariah in
the street. Later, he murders Zachariah's wife when Zach's in jail.
The final moments of the film, Zachariah howling over his wife's
body, are searing, full of anguish and anger, the full force of the
oppression of whites and the dehumanizing consequences for blacks
exploding through one man's inconceivable grief. It haunts your
memory forever.
That
raw emotion can't compensate for how blunt Come
Back, Africa
can be, both in terms of content and filmmaking. You never question
what a character's motivation is or where Rogosin's sympathies lie,
whereas On
the Bowery
had more shades of gray. Still, Come
Back, Africa
is a more emotionally visceral film thanks in no small part to being
shot on location. On
the Bowery
was shot on the actual Bowery, but the threat to Rogosin was minimal.
Not so with his second feature. He couldn't walk into South Africa
and get permission from the government to shoot a full-bore
condemnation of its inhumane treatment of its black population. So
he told officials he was in country to make a ''political-neutral
musical travelogue.'' He shot footage surreptitiously to avoid
censors, then had the material smuggled out of the country. This
gives the film a heightened sense of verite, especially in the street
scenes and in those harrowing moments of Zach confronting a
constantly shifting day-to-day reality of life in South Africa.
(While
the film is decidedly not apolitical, there are some elements of the
travelogue. There are two segments in the middle of the film where
Rogosin luxuriates on local musical expression. The first documents
life in the slum, from faces young and old to shops and gatherings of
residents, as a group of local kids play flute-like instruments. The
second captures those kids performing for white office workers and
shoppers, who look on with curiosity, impatience, and sometimes
enthusiasm. Police officers watch menacingly, but seem OK with
allowing the kids to scratch out some loose change. These scenes are
brilliant inclusions, not only as impressions of everyday life in
South Africa in 1958/9, but as records of a culture in the process of
being systemically marginalized - and possibly destroyed - by
apartheid.)
The
film is a testament to the ingenuity of Rogosin, one of America's
most undeservedly forgotten filmmakers. (His work influenced John
Cassavetes, was a touchstone for Martin Scorsese, and echoes in the
films of Errol Morris and Alex Gibney.) He took the experience of
making On
the Bowery,
honed it, sharpened it, and pointed it at the heart of one of the
most repressively racist nations in history. Come
Back, Africa
is a primal scream of outrage that Rogosin hoped would spur the world
to reject South Africa's policies and put an end to apartheid before
lasting damage could be done. We know now that the film didn't have
that effect; apartheid would last another 35 years.
But
that doesn't diminish how successful the film is as a piece of
activism. Rogosin risked his life, and the lives of his actors and
crew, to steal an unsparing glimpse into a society collapsing in on
itself thanks to racism run rampant. But Come
Back, Africa
isn't just about a society halfway around the world. The film's
about us, too. It's impossible that Rogosin didn't think he'd also
affect America's seemingly intractable apartheid, Jim Crow, and its
less talked about but no-less-significant analogues in the north. By
presenting so much cruelty and so much hatred - all of it stemming
from racism - Americans couldn't help but demand change at home.
Of
course, that effort failed, too. Accordingly, watching Come
Back, Africa
today, is still a troubling experience. Only the heartless will be
unmoved by Zachariah's arc, but it's also impossible to not dwell on
the everyday indignities, not-so-coded rhetoric, and blatant
segregation suffered by minorities based on race, gender, religion,
and sexual orientation that continues to fester around the world.
From stop-and-frisk and challenging Barack Obama's birthplace in the
United States to race-based legislation aimed at expelled Haitians
from the Dominican Republic to the rise of ISIS in the Middle East,
systemic discrimination endures, seemingly more intractable than ever
before.
Like
with On
the Bowery,
though, Come
Back, Africa
is an invaluable document of an era we'd all like to think we've
progressed beyond. And while the realities of our present can be
thoroughly discouraging, it gives Rogosin's work a different legacy
than the one he hoped for a half century ago, one that is potentially
more valuable than activism - memory. Rogosin has preserved some of
our worst societal ills in an effort to, on the one hand, eradicate
them, and on the other to remind us that the work is never done.
Maybe it can never be complete. But his documentaries are challenges
that we cannot ignore. Fifty years on, they continue to speak truth
to power, to guide us forward, and encourage us that we can affect
change - if we really want it.
Milestone
Films' efforts in bringing Rogosin's work to wider attention is one
of the great accomplishments of the Blu-ray era. Volume
I,
which included On
the Bowery,
is a majestic set; Volume
II is
just as superlative.
Besides
Come
Back, Africa,
the two-disc set includes a second feature, Black
Roots,
which even more explicitly links activism with memory.
African-American writers, musicians, activists, and leaders talk
about the black experience in America with blistering honesty and in
sometimes harrowing detail. Shot Charlie Rose-style for European
public television in 1970, with one person, two people, or a small
group on a dark set, the film is an incredible act of preservation
that could easily have carried a home video release on its own. To
that end, Milestone gives it its own disc to breathe. Disc 2
includes Black
Roots
and a 27-minute making-of feature. Also included is the 74-minute
documentary Have
You Seen Drum Recently?,
a 1989 film that captures the importance (socially, culturally, and
politically) of the South African magazine Drum,
which catered to an urban black readership during apartheid.
Come Back, Africa
gets all of Disc 1. Besides the film, there's a 64-minute making of
documentary An
American in Sophiatown,
an audio interview Rogosin did with United Nations radio in 1978
about what he hoped to accomplish with the film and how like South
Africa is to end apartheid, an introduction by Martin Scorsese, and a
trailer. It's hard to think what else could be added to either disc.
Every extra is valuable and adds context and understanding to who
Rogosin was as a filmmaker and person.
On the technical side,
Come
Back, Africa
is given an amazing visual presentation. It went through a 2K
restoration in 2005, which is the source for the disc. It's hard to
imagine it ever looked as good as it does today. (Previously, the
film has been passed from college campus to film society, which isn't
the ideal condition for preserving print quality.) That said, there
are some points in the film where frames are missing or it's a bit
soft. Those are so few and far between, though, that they by no
means impair the experience. Black
Roots
is a different story. The print is in much rougher shape. It's a
poorly lit film made for public TV, and it looks about how that
sounds. It doesn't diminish the value of the film itself, but it
does at times make it a challenge to watch. Both are roughly
presented in 1.33 X 1 1080p digital High Definition presentations.
Audio-wise,
the same breakdown exists. Come
Back, Africa
has a PCM Mono soundtrack, which does its job without much pop or
hiss. There's an occasional warble, but, again, it doesn't impair
anything. Black
Roots,
meanwhile, is a little tougher to hear. Mic placement, especially in
the larger group scenes, might have been an issue - single-person
interviews are fine, but the more people (and elements, like guitars)
are added, the audio gets more and more strained.
That
said, we're extraordinarily lucky to have this work preserved in
digital form. Any quibbles with the presentation are minor compared
to the alternative: this work committed to oblivion.
-
Dante A. Ciampaglia