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MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Sarafina’: Backstage Paean to Freedom

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Times Film Critic

“Sarafina!” the stage musical dramatizing the student uprising in Soweto in 1976 performed by a troupe of young black South African schoolchildren, has not yet come to Los Angeles.

It’s been busy being a hit in Manhattan since 1987. But you can get a taste of its crackling energy and the heroic commitment of its cast in “Voices of Sarafina!” (Goldwyn Pavilion) a touching backstage and onstage documentary by Nigel Noble, illustrating the thoughts and experiences of these formidable young performers.

Mbongeni Ngema, their patriarchal author-director, dead serious in his black leather cap and jacket, tells one group that he expects his next words to live with them forever: On their first time away from their homeland, they must see themselves as ambassadors of black South Africa. To the free world, they must interpret life as they have known it in the townships and in schools patrolled by armed soldiers. “If you say you don’t know anything, what sort of ambassadors are you?” he asks.

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The 28 singers and dancers, molded into a performing family by Ngema, are phenomenal ambassadors. Strong, beautiful, sweet, smart, talented teen-agers, they grew up in the townships, mostly around Durban. As they speak of their lives at home, the contrast between their age, their extraordinary sweetness and their experience--humiliation on a daily basis, the killings of friends their own age--is almost overwhelming.

Just as you notice how potent their smiles are, one girl, probably no more than 15, explains that those smiles are part of their armor. When they are detained or beaten by South African police, their smiles come back no matter the provocation. “The black laugh,” she calls it.

Wearing their stage uniform--black derby, black sweater, starched white shirt and tie--they sing in the beautiful harmonies recognizeable from the songs of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, an infectious and haunting music known as Mbaganga, the music of liberation. (“Sarafina’s!” songs are the work of Hugh Masekela and Ngema.)

Photographing a staged work that has been consciously exaggerated so that the action and the accents can be read “by the old lady in the back row on Broadway” poses a few hazards which film maker Noble hasn’t solved. Onstage, a couple of the performers--the schoolteacher and the boy playing Hector Peterson, the first youth shot to death at Soweto--seem grotesquely theatrical, so over-mugged that you cringe. (Then hate yourself for cringing.)

If there had been a way to take these 2,000-watt performances down just a little when they were filmed, they would have had an even greater impact. That’s especially true after we’ve met Pat Mlaba, the quiet, intensely thoughtful actor who plays Peterson, and can contrast the power he carries in a quiet interview with the deliberate overkill he’s been directed to deliver onstage.

A small portion of the crisply photographed film was shot in South Africa; there’s another contrast to these scenes. As the young cast speaks movingly of their dreams, one talks about the fields and the mountains of his homeland. The shots are of the sun-baked, tin-shacked dusty township villages, as little children amuse themselves kicking a stone along the path. “I dream only of freedom,” one girl says gravely, “God and our ancestors will help us.”

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If the film has a climax, it’s the surprise visit in the green room of Miriam Makeba, in the 27th year of her exile. Apparently, none of the cast had ever seen her or even dreamed of the possibility. The presence of “Mama Zanzee,” this wellspring of inspiration; her enormous pride in these kids who by now are weeping openly; and their spontaneous singing of “Nkosi Sikeleli Afrika” with Makeba make a scene of absolutely wracking emotion.

If the news from Johannesburg in the last week has been shocking and dispiriting and a jolt of inspiration is needed, you could find no purer, stronger source than these extraordinary, shiningly committed young people. When Makeba says, “We are a proud people, a struggling people, and we will win our independence,” you need only look at the calm, resolute faces of this cast to know the certainty of that promise.

‘VOICES OF SARAFINA!’

A Lincoln Center Theater/Noble Enterprises production. Producers Bernard Gersten, Nigel Noble. Director Noble. Executive producers Gregory Mosher, Gersten. Co-producer Diane Kolyer. Co-creator, editor Joan Morris. Camera John Hazard. With the cast of the Broadway Production of “Sarafina!” written and directed by Mbongeni Ngema. Music conducted and arranged by Hugh Masekela, Ngema.

Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.

Times-rated: Family.

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