Modisane lets it roll in Michigan

Post-doctoral fellow in Archives and Public Culture Dr Litheko Modisane started February on a high note when he delivered a Brown Bag Lecture at the Institute of Humanities at the University of Michigan.

Modisane's exploration of the iconographic 1959 film, Come Back, Africa, was described by the Universityof Michigan's Institute of Humanities, Daniel Herwitz, as 'riveting'.

Come Back, Africa was made by American independent filmmaker, Lionel Rogosin, in collaboration with Sophiatown intellectuals Lewis Nkosi, Bloke Modisane and Can Themba. The film was produced surreptitiously, during the days of apartheid repression, and mostly circulated abroad.

Critical to its power of dialogue and representation of the conditions of black South Africans was the partnership internal to its creation, which crossed the 'colour line', imbuing the film with a sense of perspicuity, liveliness, forth right dialogue and sense of place. A slice of black urban life in 1950s Sophiatown and greater Johannesburg, the film is among the few produced at a moment of censorship and lack of resources, conditions which were crucial to its becoming an icon of the times and resonating with the civil rights struggle in America.

Modisane's paper documents the public reception of this film in America and elsewhere, paying particular attention to its circumstances of non-circulation or erratic circulation. This paper forms one chapter of the book Modisane has completed while a University of Michigan Presidential Scholar, on leave from a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Cape Town. 

To view Modisane's Brown Bag Lecture on line, go to: http://lecb.physics.lsa.umich.edu/CWIS/browser.php?ResourceId=3929