Dolly Rathebe

Little Bird's first South African production, SOPHIATOWN has won the award for Best Documentary at the Cape Town World Cinema Festival 2003. SOPHIATOWN celebrates the great popular jazz music of the 1950's in South Africa; a rich tradition deserving international attention. Director Pascale Lamche, traces the music, uncovers the artists who created it and the unique culture in which it thrived, concentrated in Sophiatown, Johannesburg's own Harlem, which fuelled by liberation politics until its destruction by the Apartheid regime. The film features Nelson Mandela and such household names from the jazz world as Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba, Abdullah Ibrahim, Jonas Gwangwa and Caiphus Semenya.

Open details →

The struggle to eradicate apartheid in South Africa has been chronicled over time, but no one has addressed the vital role music plays in this challenge. This documentary by Lee Hirsch recounts a fascinating and little-known part of South Africa's political history through archival footage, interviews and, of course, several mesmerizing musical performances.

Open details →

Post-apartheid South Africa is the setting for this drama about a mismatched twosome who end up together on a life-altering journey to Cape Town. Polar opposites Kobus (Ian Roberts), a white ex-soldier who struggles with demons from his past, and Wonderboy (Kagiso Mtetwa), a young black street kid who clings to memories of his family, come together to take on the society that has cast them aside and eventually build a friendship for the ages.

Open details →

A young Soweto actor joins a gang to study up and be more convincing in a gangster role he wants.

Open details →

A South-African preacher goes to search for his wayward son who has committed a crime in the big city.

Open details →

This controversial political thriller, which provoked mass demonstrations and nine deaths in South Africa when it was first shown, gives dramatic form to the African National Congress's basic program of reconcilliation within a non-racialist, democratic society. A train massacre by an Inkatha militant causes the sole witness to the crime to flee the Soweto townships to take refuge in Johannesburg; but the violence follows him when his ANC comrades try to buy guns for a retaliatory raid against Inkatha supporters.

Open details →