TELEVISION
CITIZEN X
Communities across South Africa are up in arms. Tired of waiting for the state to make good on liberation’s promises and facing deepening poverty they have once again taken to the streets. Protest actions have increased in number and volatility since the early 2000’s, reaching record highs in 2010. CITIZEN X is an unflinching portrait of civil unrest in the New South Africa; recently crowned the most unequal society in the world.
Through the experiences of community leaders in Alexandra, Soweto and Khutsong, the film critically traces the potential beginnings of a popular resistance and asks some difficult questions of both the movements and the state they are up against. Are these protests demanding the dream of equality for all be kept on the agenda… and if not why not?
Atlantic Philanthropies
Date:2010
Directors: Arya Lalloo
Producer: Rehad Desai
FATHER INSIDE
Magadien Wentzel was first arrested in the mid-seventies for taking part in a student protest against apartheid. This event was to change the course of his life. He spent most of his adulthood in Western Cape prisons and as a leader of the 28s gang, a powerful man who commanded fear on the “inside”. But destiny and history intervened again when prison reform programmes were introduced in South African prisons after apartheid ended. When he was finally released in 2003, Magadien faced the arduous task of proving his reform to his three children, his community and himself.
Date:2009
Director: Rehad Desai
Producers: Rehad Desai and Arya Lalloo
Broadcaster: SABC South Africa
HEART OF WHITENESS
A personal journey, in the form of a road movie, that shows how South Africa’s segregated past lives on in the social geography of the present. Black filmmaker Rehad Desai seeks out what lies at the core of white identity, from the English middle class of Johannesburg’s suburbs, to the Afrikaners of the towns that belonged to the former Transvaal, to their last outpost in Orania, a self-proclaimed homeland of small group of Afrikaners.
Date: 2006
Director: Rehad Desai
Producers: Rehad Desai & Anita Khanna
Broadcaster: SABC South Africa
ROCKEY STREET TO RECOVERY
This film charts the life of Melanie Ferguson as she plummeted into heroin addiction and how she came out the other side to become a leading writer and author.
Date:2005
Director: Arya Lalloo
Producer: Rehad Desai
Broadcaster: SABC South Africa
DILEMMA
A personal documentary that looks at the prospect of the director’s six-year old son relocating to Austria following the rise of the far right in Austria, and traces the harrowing story of an asylum seeker.
Date:2002
Director: Rehad Desai Producer: Rehad Desai
Broadcaster: SABC South Africa
MY LAND, MY LIFE
This is a journey into the heart of Zimbabwean crisis seen through the eyes of the filmmaker, who once lived in Zimbabwe and held Mugabe in esteem. As he returns to make sense of the conflict he is led into a strife-torn farming area. Through three central characters that include a farmer, a farm worker and a war veteran, we enter the social texture of present-day drama that defines rural and urban Zimbabwe. The conflict between farm worker and settlers is explored as is the conflict between farmer and farm worker. This nuanced piece is frank in its pro-equality stance and candid but poetic in the critique of those who claim to represent the interests of peasants and workers on both sides.
Date:2002
Director: Rehad Desai
Producers: Rehad Desai, Tendeka Matutu & Dan Jawitz
Broadcasters: SABC South Africa and NPS Holland
CARLOS CARDOSO
A portrait of the controversial left-wing journalist from Mozambique, who was slain for his investigative and campaigning work.
Date:2002
Director: Rehad Desai
Producers: Joao Ribeiro & Rehad Desai
Uhuru Pictures and Cool Productions