South Africa / 1960 / 83mins / Docufiction, Documentary / Zulu and Afrikaans

Come Back, Africa, the second feature-length film by Lionel Rogosin is a fiction / non-fiction, a hybrid of fictional film and documentary: a docufiction. Desperate to feed his household, Zachariah, a young Zulu, departs his famine-stricken kraal to work in the Johannesburg gold mines. He eventually settles in one of the squalid apartheid-era townships, only to find himself confronted with a barrage of South Africa's infamous pass laws restricting his every move. Zachariah learns that he cannot seek employment without a pass; paradoxically, he cannot obtain a pass without employment. Meanwhile, his family is consistently threatened with exile or imprisonment if they fail to comply with these draconian regulations. Zachariah subsequently drifts through a succession of odd jobs, ridiculed, insulted, and ostracized by unfeeling Afrikaner superintendents. As they struggle to support their home, even Zachariah's spouse Vinah is forced to take up domestic service; she lives on the property of a white landowner, away from her husband. When the latter visits her one lonely evening, he is arrested by the SAP on trespassing charges.

Lionel Rogosin

Lionel Rogosin was born in New York City in 1924, graduated from Yale with a degree in chemical engineering, and spent four years in the Navy during World War II. After a decade in business, he decided to become a filmmaker. His first film, On The Bowery, is a dramatic documentary about homeless men on New York’s Skid Row; it won the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival and brought Rogosin to the forefront of the documentary movement. He followed On The Bowery with Come Back, Africa in 1960 and several other feature-length documentaries. Lionel Rogosin passed away in December 2000 in Los Angeles. Learn More