Nadine Gordimer
A drama adapted from Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer's short story 'Oral History'
This socially conscious film, set in South Africa, presents an interracial love story between a German geologist and a young black woman. The German is only visiting South Africa. He meets his new love in a shop where he hires her as his housekeeper. She soon becomes his lover and this infuriates their nosy neighbors who report them to the police.
In this drama, the Banjee family resides in an area of Johannesburg where Indians are no longer permitted to live. Mr. Bamjee is a vegetable seller and his wife, unlike him, becomes politically involved fighting against the injustices of apartheid. When his wife is arrested and imprisoned, Mr. Bamjee slowly realizes that his wife's concern for others is not a rejection of him.
The story begins when Toby (Ivan Jackson), a young English businessman, arrives in South Africa to take charge of a publishing firm. He knows little about apartheid and so at first sees no contradiction in developing a relationship with an elite, upper-class white woman and with a woman dedicated to fighting apartheid. But as Toby makes friends with one of the black South Africans (Zaku Mokae), and as he registers both the subtle and more obvious, deep-seated racial prejudices of the minority white population, some of the truth of the oppression here begins to dawn. That is brought to a head when tragedy strikes.
