MovieChat Forums > Cry Freedom (1987) Discussion > First saw This Film In High School

First saw This Film In High School

posted 16 years ago by frisco_kid_2000
1 reply | jump to latest

Class of '99 and I saw it in my freshman year, had an impact on me because up until then I had no idea how terrible apartheid was until my class studied it.

I just watched it again early this morning on movieplex and felt compelled to write how powerful a film I think it is. Even though apartheid was eliminated, we must never forget!!

In respect to Donald Woods, did his family return to South Africa after the end of apartheid, and what is the state of South Africa now??

[–] conductor71 9 years ago

This extract is taken from Donald Woods' obituary in The Guardian (20th August 2001):

After 13 years in exile, he finally returned to the new South Africa in 1990, though he continued to live primarily in Britain. He later made several visits to his homeland - the last in May for the wedding of Biko's son, Nkosinathi. Up until his death, he had been working on a project to erect a statue of Nelson Mandela in Trafalgar Square, once a symbolic focus of anti-apartheid protests because it housed the hated South African high commission.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2001/aug/20/pressandpublishing.guardianobituaries

And here is an extract from the obituary of Donald's widow, Wendy Woods, taken from The Independent (1st August 2013) - she saw through to completion that unfinished project of Donald's to erect a statue of Nelson Mandela in Trafalgar Square:

London was not as exciting but it was busy. They settled in Surbiton, south London and Donald raced around the world campaigning against apartheid, while Wendy saw to the children, worked for the Canon Collins educational trust and Amnesty International, collected books for Fort Hare, Nelson Mandela's old university, and wrote articles for the cause.

As a trustee of the Mandela statue fund, initiated by Donald before his death, she unveiled the statue with the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Parliament Square, London, in the presence of the former president. The Donald Woods Foundation, which she founded, has built clinics in the impoverished rural Eastern Cape. Wendy and her family are repaying a debt to the country that allowed them to play a small but significant role in its developing story.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/wendy-woods-activist-who-with-her-husband-donald-struggled-against-apartheid-8740647.html