Jemima and Johnny + Home Coming

Saturday  15 May 2pm -5.00pm

BFI SouthBank

Belvedere Road SE1

Tube: Waterloo.

Tickets £5.00 0207 928 3232

www.bfi.org.uk www.blackhistorywalks.co.uk

Jemima and Johnny 1966, Directed by Lionel Ngakane, ANC freedom fighter and refugee to London

 In 1958, Notting Hill in West London erupted in vicious race riots. In South Africa in 1963, Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress leader, was imprisoned for life. Lionel Ngakane, a fellow ANC member, was exiled from South Africa and came to Britain to be a film director. Ngakane's first fiction film, the short Jemima + Johnny (1966), is set in a Notting Hill still simmering with racial conflict.

Jemima + Johnny is shot in a gritty realist style, using hand-held cameras and 'non-sync' sound without narration, and pays homage to the 1950s Free Cinema documentary movement. The poor sound quality reflects the small budget, but might also evoke the confusion felt by an immigrant in an unfamiliar country.

5 year old Johnny is the son of a white nationalist, Jemima the daughter of a Caribbean family. In their childhood innocence they immediately form a bond which defies prejudice. London is new to Jemima, and as Johnny leads her through the streets, we are offered an insight into London life in the 60s, a world where children freely roam the streets, and where a rag and bone man still collects scraps with a horse and cart.

Homecoming

Charlie, Thabo and Peter, three "MK" veterans from the armed branch of the African National Congress, return to post-apartheid South Africa in 1996 after years of exile. It will not be easy for them to find their place in society again. Charlie dreams of opening a club, Thabo has to patch up his relationship with his wife and son and Peter continues to work in the Party and investigate the traitors of the ANC. Continuously hampered as he delves into the Government's files, his ensuing investigations provide shocking revelations of the identities of the traitors. Pared down from a successful mini series for the South African Broadcasting Corporation, Homecoming draws its plot from the real life experiences of acclaimed filmmaker and writer, Zola Maseko, a former "MK" soldier of the ANC. Morman Maake (26) is perhaps the most promising young director from South Africa. He studied at ADFA, a dynamic young film- and drama school in Johannesburg. He has several films to his name, amongst which Sweet Home (1999), Soldiers of Rock (2003), and Homecoming (2005