Milisuthando

Film by Milisuthando Bongela, South Africa/Colombia, 2023, 128'; languages: English, Xhosa; English subtitles.

Milisuthando Bongela grew up during apartheid in the Transkei, the first formally declared independent homeland for black people in South Africa. However, the filmmaker only found out what racial segregation meant and what it had done afterwards, as one of the first black children at a "mixed" school in East London, South Africa. Thoughts, conversations, rituals and previously unseen archive material interweave the autobiographical with the historical to create an exemplary story about the emergence of racism and its far-reaching consequences.

The film will premiere in Switzerland at this year’s ‘Focus’ programme of the Solothurn Film Festival; the screening at the Ethnographic Museum UZH is the second and so far only other Swiss screening. The filmmaker will address us personally on a digital channel.