Have You Heard from Johannesburg

Abstract

This is what transnational history looks like. Connie Field's remarkable documentary series deftly tracks the history of the global social movement to end apartheid, starting in 1948, with the institution's beginnings, and ending in the early 1990s, with its demise.1 Like the anti-apartheid movement itself, the film is based in South African realities and political struggle, but reaches out to include—to depend centrally upon—the commitments and activism of people around the world. Riveting, emotionally powerful, and historically rich, this is an outstanding piece of documentary filmmaking. It includes hundreds of interviews with a truly impressive range of people of many nationalities and from all levels of political life, including South African and international activists, business leaders, religious people, and politicians of many stripes. The series is particularly strong, though, in its use of television news and other archival footage; the talking heads are truly commentators, as the story unfolds primarily in the cadences of newscasts and film footage of the decades in which it happened.