Films with: Rogosin, Lionel

Come back, Africa

In 1957, Rogosin travelled to South Africa and created a powerfully, moving drama exposing the harsh reality of life under the system apartheid. Filmed secretly under the noses of the feared South African police, Rogosin, his crew, and cast risked arrest and deportation. Miriam Makeba was banned from her country after travelling to Venice for the movie's premiere. The scenes shot in the vibrant black ghetto of Sophiatown are precious images of a lost world. Rogosin took the fight for equality to his homeland with Black roots, his documentary on African American life. The extraordinary cast, including Reverend Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, attorney and feminist activist Florynce "Flo" Kennedy, musicians Jim Collier, Wende [i.e. Wendy] Smith, Larry Johnson and Reverend Gary Davis, tell stories of heartbreak and despair while their songs blow the roof off the rafters. The film combines tales of oppression with hauntingly beautiful images of the faces of black men, women and children.

DVD 11990

Films of Lionel Rogosin,

On the Bowery chronicles three days in the drinking life of Ray Salyer which jump-started the post-war American independent film movement, earning an Oscar nomination. Good times, Wonderful times was Rogosin's plea for humanity and against war and fascism, includes collected archive footage of war atrocities interspersed with scenes of a London cocktail party's mundane chat. Out is a documentary Rogosin made for the United nations telling the plight of Hungarian refugees fleeing to Austria in the aftermath of the Hungarian Revolutioon of 1956.

DVD 9580