South Africa / 2004 / 104mins / Historical Drama / English, Afrikaans and German

Drum depicts Sophiatown in the 1950s, a vibrant place full of music, love, and laughter, and the breeding ground for resistance. Set in Johannesburg during the era of Big Band Jazz, this film captures a period when a generation of courageous South African writers, critics, musicians and journalists emerged, intermingling with Shebeen queens, and tsotsismin loud shirts and wide brimmed hats. The popular Drum magazine is the platform for the film, led by Mr Drum Henry Nxumalo; a fun loving, hard-drinking philanderer and hotshot journalist. As Nxumalo gets swept up in the movement to challenge apartheid, his enterprising reportage leads him into direct conflict with South Africa's apartheid machinery, with fatal consequences.

Zola Maseko

Swazi film director and screenwriter Zola Maseko was born in exile in 1967. Educated in Swaziland and Tanzania, he joined Umkhonto We Sizwe, the armed sector of the African National Congress, in 1987. After moving to the United Kingdom, he graduated from the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield in 1994. Maseko’s first film was the documentary Dear Sunshine, released in 1992. He fought apartheid in several countries. He moved to South Africa in 1994 and wrote The Foreigner, a short fiction film about xenophobia in this country. In 1998 Zola Maseko directed The Life and Times of Sara Baartman. Other short films by Maseko include Children of the Revolution (2002), A Drink in the Passage (2002) and The Return of Sara Baartman (2003). The latter won the Special Jury Award at FESPACO. His first feature film was Drum, released in 2004. Set in 1950s Johannesburg, it tells of the magazine of the same name and specifically focuses on Henry Nxumalo, a journalist fighting apartheid. The film received the top prize at FESPACO, the Golden Stallion of Yennenga. The filmmaker is currently working on the television series Homecoming, following the adventures of three MK fighters trying to fit in with the rest of South Africa and also working on Liverpool Leopard, which is to be his second feature film. Learn More