‘SATHIMA’S WINDSONG’ – a film by Daniel A Yon

The Mannenberg Film Club, Harare

Wednesday 3 August 2011, 6pm

On Wednesday 3 August the 6pm Mannenberg film club welcomes a well known and highly respected ‘cousin-brother’ of Zimbabwe, Dan Yon, with his latest documentary film, ‘Sathima’s Windsong’. 

The film is a lyrical portrait of the life of acclaimed South African jazz singer Sathima Bea Benjamin, born in Johannesburg in 1936, raised in Cape Town, interfaced with jazz greats of the world, and now based in New York City. 

“In this film, which is shot in New York and Cape Town, the life history of South African-born jazz singer, Sathima Bea Benjamin, unfolds through her own reflections and reminiscences, which are woven together with the music she has created and with the reflections of five people who know her work and the milieu which shaped it.  In her flat in the Chelsea Hotel in New York, where she has lived for thirty-two years, Sathima patches together her journeys, literal and figurative, from Apartheid South Africa and ‘the pattern of brokenness’ from which she hailed, to Europe and a chance meeting and recording with Duke Ellington, to starting afresh and setting up her own record company in New York. 

The film is a celebration of Sathima’s work and a meditation on jazz and diaspora. As it moves back and forth between Cape Town and New York, to the lyrics and rhythm of her music, it becomes, much like the title of her haunting song, Windsong, a reflection on history, time and place; on Apartheid, anti-Apartheid and their legacies, as well as the passionate questions of memory, displacement and belonging.” (www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=102438949799058&ref=mf)

In October 2004, South African president Thabo Mbeki bestowed upon Sathima the Order of Ikhamanga Silver Award in recognition for her “excellent contribution as a jazz artist” in South Africa and internationally, as well as for her contribution “to the struggle against apartheid.” And in March 2005, the art group Pen and Brush, Inc. presented her with a Certificate of Achievement for her work as a performer, musician, composer, and “activist in the struggle for human rights in South Africa.” Benjamin is featured in the March 2006 issue of Jazztimes.

Sathima Bea Benjamin’s most recent CD, SongSpirit, was released on October 17 in celebration of her 70th birthday. A compilation record, it includes tracks from her earlier albums, starting with A Morning In Paris and going through Musical Echoes, plus a previously unreleased duet with Abdullah Ibrahim from 1973.  (www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sathima_Bea_Benjamin)

The film ‘Sathima’s Windsong’ was nominated for the People’s Choice Award at the 2010 Capetown Film Festival, and screened at the Zanzibar International Film Festival, in June 2011.  After the Harare screening, the film travels to Capetown for screenings at the University of Capetown and the District Six Museum.

Dan Yon

This is the third film by the widely acclaimed author and anthropologist Dan Yon, who spent several years teaching in the newly independent Zimbabwe of the early 80s, and is now Associate Professor in the Department of Social Anthropology and Faculty of Education at York University in Toronto, travelling and lecturing widely around the world.

Born on the tiny extinct volcano island of St Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean, Dan has pursued his fascination of people and history across the globe, and into the medium of film.  He wrote, directed and produced ‘It Just goes On’, and ‘One Hundred Men’ in 2008, and ‘Sathima’s Windsong’ in 2010.  In 2000 he published the book “Elusive Culture: Schooling, Race, and Identity in Global Times”, an ethnographic study of youth engaged in a passionate quest for identity in global times. It explores questions of identity and culture in relation to the policies and practices of anti-racism, multiculturalism, and the competing discourses of identity.

The movement of people from the island also resulted in Yon families springing up in South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique and eventually Zimbabwe.  In Harare, Dan will be welcomed by the Zimbabwe branch of the family and also by former students of Zengeza High in Chitungwiza, and colleagues from the Curriculum Development Unit of the Ministry of Education.

The Mannenberg has always been a special space for jazz, host to many jazzists of the subregion, and the Wednesday film club is currently enjoying a jazz history video series, courtesy of the US Embassy in Harare. 

‘Sathima’s Windsong’ is a valuable documentation of jazz in Southern Africa which should not be missed.  A copy of the film is being acquired for the library of The Arts Factory - the new artists resource centre under development by Pamberi Trust.

The Wed 3 August screening at 6pm is free, and all people are welcome.

Pamberi Trust @ The Mannenberg

Fife Ave Mall/6^th Street, Harare

0772 394 394

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