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.
LAND APART (1974)
Dir. Sven Persson * Writer Allister Sparks * 1h30min
A hybrid documentary in which a fictional nightclub singer, stung by European criticism of his homeland, trades politically charged arguments with a friend who gives him a history of South Africa and apartheid. It was the first locally made documentary to openly debate apartheid. The censors demanded heavy cuts, and the original cut sat in the national film archive until its recent re-release.