The Johannesburg filmmaker Cedric Sundstrom has been working on a documentary film on the history of cinema in South Africa.  The South African-based movie review show “The Admiral and Akin” has put the trailer of Sundstrom’s film online. (That’s it above.) They also interviewed him on the show. You can only see the the episode trailer on Youtube.*

Anyway, I would love to see Sundstrom’s finished film. In Darkest Hollywood,” which came out in 1994 already.

Here‘s a link to an earlier three-part print interview with Sundstrom by the Gauteng Film Board about the broad outlines of that film history.  We notice that cinema/film in South Africa’s earlier roots mimicks American and British cinema (segregated screens, Westerns dominated, etcetera; an American emigrant played a central role in developing a studio system in South Africa), that the industry focused exclusively on the lives of whites–“Boers and Brits”–in the first half of the 20th century, that Afrikaner cinema (heavily state-subsidized dominated after World War II), the emergence of anti-apartheid films in the mid-1960s alongside ethnic comedies and slapstick films, and finally the turn to Hollywood after Apartheid.

* On a sidenote, I have suggested the Admiral and Akin put the episodes of their show online as soon as it done broadcasting them on African satellite TV.  Mainly for the the benefits of those living outside the continent. But even more since the show seems to be the only place where for example, director Zola Maseko would recently make this kind of public statement: “South Africa’s film industry remains the last bastion of white supremacy.”

Further Reading

Whose game is remembered?

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations opens in Morocco amid growing calls to preserve the stories, players, and legacy of the women who built the game—before they’re lost to erasure and algorithm alike.

Sovereignty or supremacy?

As far-right politics gain traction across the globe, some South Africans are embracing Trumpism not out of policy conviction but out of a deeper, more troubling identification.

From Cape To Cairo

When two Africans—one from the south, the other from the north—set out to cross the continent, they raised the question: how easy is it for an African to move in their own land?

The road to Rafah

The ‘Sumud’ convoy from Tunis to Gaza is reviving the radical promise of pan-African solidarity and reclaiming an anticolonial tactic lost to history.

Sinners and ancestors

Ryan Coogler’s latest film is more than a vampire fable—it’s a bridge between Black American history and African audiences hungry for connection, investment, and storytelling rooted in shared struggle.