21 juni, 2010

DVD-tip

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Nu het WK in Zuid-Afrika gespeeld wordt, staat het land ineens in de belangstelling.
Het gaat over zwart, blank, armoede, rijkdom, criminaliteit, townshps, drugs, aids - maar ook over natuur, kunst en cultuur. We worden overladen met documentaires.

Zaterdagnacht zag ik een prachtige film uit 2004 "Yesterday."
Direction and screenplay: Darrell Roodt
Cast: Leleti Khumalo, Lihle Mvelase, Kenneth Kambule, Harriet Lehabe, Camilla Walker
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To date, nowhere has the AIDS pandemic been felt more strongly than in Sub-Saharan Africa, home to approximately 10% of the world population and to more than 70% of the planet’s 40 million AIDS cases. In the past twenty-five years, it is estimated that more than 20 million Sub-Saharan Africans have died from complications of the disease. Even today, drug cocktails that are relatively accessible in other parts of the globe are still beyond the means of the vast majority of Africans.
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Writer-director Darrell Roodt‘s South African drama Yesterday is set in this catastrophic scenario. The film depicts the effects of AIDS in the life of a young Zulu woman who contracts HIV from her husband. Although Roodt’s narrative maintains its focus on the plight of one particular woman, the (for non-Zulus) quirkily named heroine Yesterday is representative of the millions of other women, men, and children who are now suffering or who have perished from the effects of HIV in that part of the world.
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In a small, remote Zulu village, an illiterate woman, Yesterday (Leleti Khumalo), ekes out a living tilling the soil. So named because her father believed that things had been better in the past, Yesterday’s day-to-day existence consists of a series of major chores, including walking to the nearest hospital, located several kilometers away, to find out why she has been feeling so tired lately.
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When Yesterday discovers she has contracted HIV from her husband, John (Kenneth Kambule), a miner working in Johannesburg, she travels to the big city to tell him. At first, John violently refuses to accept the truth, but some time later he shows up at the Zulu village, considerably weakened.
It’s up to Yesterday to care for John, for their young daughter, Beauty (Lihle Mvelase), and for herself. Yesterday’s health may be failing, but she still needs to keep on working to support her family. She decides she will not succumb to the disease until her daughter starts going to school to get the education she never had.
Wat een indrukwekkende film - zonder enige valse sentimenten! Wat is het adembenemend land(schap) - zo prachtig in beeld gebracht!

Een absolute must see!


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