Joe Blog

The Resonance Archive Festival returns from 25 to 29 November 2026, in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Qonce, under the theme Counter-narratives of Commemoration. Through film, performance and conversation, the festival asks who writes those versions of the past, whose stories they leave out, and what becomes possible when those stories are told on their own terms. At the centre of the festival are rare South African films that have been tracked down in forgotten archives and digitised so audiences can see them again, some for the first time.
SEE THE FULL PROGRAMME FOR THE BIOSCOPE HERE.
A COUNTER-NARRATIVE ANTHOLOGY - Short film selection.
Post-Apartheid Popcorn (Dean Slotar, 1992)
Set against the fragile transition to South Africa’s first democratic elections, Slotar’s essay film interrogates the birth of a “new South Africa”. Through sharp montage, it sets glossy corporate commercials promoting a non- racial utopia against raw archival footage of township violence and asks whether the promised democratic future is a genuine reality or an illusion masking deep economic inequality.
Atrophy and the Fear of Fading (Palesa Shongwe, 2010)
A poetic short about the passage from youth to adulthood, using dance as a metaphor for life and political struggle.
Anatomy of Apartheid (Antony Thomas, 1964)
A government-backed propaganda film defending “separate development”, in effect a sales pitch for the homelands. The twist lies with its director: Thomas was 22 and, by his own account, completely taken in. He later made The South African Experience trilogy, which confronted the very system this film promoted.
The Burning (Stephen Frears, 1968).
Based on a story by Roland Starke · Cast Gwen Davies, Cosmo Pieterse. On a sweltering summer day, a wealthy white matriarch insists on taking her household on a trip to the country, even though her staff warn her that an uprising is under way. ‘The Burning’ was Stephen Frears’ first film.