The internationally acclaimed documentary film Punk in Africa  will make its first appearance in local cinemas this month. Directed by Keith Jones and Deon Maas, the film will be screened at the Labia Cinema on Orange in Cape Town on 17 January and the Bioscope in Johannesburg from 20-27 January.

The film has been invited to be officially unveiled at the world-renowned International Film Festival Rotterdam on 29-31 January, following successful local and international premieres at the Durban International Film Festival in July 2011 and the Festival Do Rio in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in October 2011. The film has also been selected as an official entry at the One World Film Festival in March 2012 in Prague, Czech Republic, Europe’s most prestigious festival of human rights and political documentaries.

Punk in Africa is the untold story of the multi-racial punk movement within recent political and social upheavals in three Southern African countries: South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. In this context the punk subculture represented a genuinely radical impulse, set against political struggle, economic hardship and even civil war. The story unfolds from the Johannesburg underground rock scene of the 1970s, the multi-racial punk bands formed in the wake of the Soweto Uprising and the anti-apartheid sounds of the 1980s to the rise of African-inspired ska-punk from Cape Town to Maputo in the democratic 1990s. Today an emerging generation of new music confronts contemporary political challenges in Zimbabwe and Afrikaans identity politics in South Africa, as the scene also begins to spread across the African continent.

“…bursting with the heyday of the multiracial punk scene…with a loving emphasis on the surprising - and often overlooked - role that punk music played in Africa.” – NAT GEO MUSIC

“…a period which remains a mystery even to most connoisseurs of the genre…regardless of whether or not you have any vested interest in punk music, the film is compelling and socially valuable.” - OKAYAFRICA

“Deon Maas and Keith Jones’ doccie Punk In Africa…aims to liberate pop-culture discourse from its silly racial laagers.” - Bongani Madondo, ROLLING STONE SA

The film is a co-production between SAFTA-awarded Johannesburg production company Meerkat Media and Prague-based independent producers Peligroso Productions and Bohemian Lion and is represented for international sales and festivals by Rise and Shine Films in Berlin, Germany. Production was sponsored in part by the National Film and Video Foundation of South Africa, Red Bull Media Group (Austria) and the noted European post-production studio UPP (Czech Republic).

For more information click here

Issued by Deon Maas