Coming to POV next Tuesday, July 26: MUGABE AND THE WHITE AFRICAN
Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson’s film had its world premiere at Hot Docs in 2009, and went on to play at a number of notable festivals, including London, IDFA, Palm Springs, San Francisco, Seattle, Hamptons, and Silverdocs. In addition to winning jury prizes at the latter two events, the documentary also won Best Documentary at the British Independent Film Awards, and was nominated for a BAFTA.
I wrote about the film out of Hot Docs for indieWIRE, saying:
MUGABE AND THE WHITE AFRICAN tackles another government and its repressive policies by focusing on the legal struggle of a white Zimbabwean farmer and his family to keep his land in the face of President Robert Mugabe’s corrupt and racist land reform policy. Exploring the question of what it means to be part of the white minority in an African country, the directors risk their own safety by secretly filming incidents of violence intended to intimidate whites off of their land.
Bailey and Thompson found a solid protagonist in 75-year-old Michael Campbell, an Australian-born, naturalized Zimbabwean. He refuses to bow down to Mugabe’s discriminatory practices, challenging the government’s program legally, and holding his ground despite threats of violence against him and his family. This well-crafted film simultaneously operates as a profile of Campbell, a tense legal thriller, and a decades-spanning history of the legacy of racist policies in the African nation.
what (not) to doc 