EVENT DETAILS

Pre-Screening Dialogue and Screening of Miners Shot Down

Pre-screening dialogue and screening of Miners Shot Down.

Pre-screening dialogue with the director, Rehad Desai, Professor Tiffany Willoughby-Herard and Professor Frank B. Wilderson III. 

In August 2012, mineworkers in one of South Africa's biggest platinum mines began a wildcat strike for better wages. Six days into the strike, the police used live ammunition to brutally suppress it, killing 34 and injuring many more. The police insisted that they shot in self-defense. "Miners Shot Down" tells a different story, one that unfolds in real time over seven days, like a ticking time bomb. The film weaves together the central point of view of three strike leaders, Mambush, Tholakele and Mzoxolo, with compelling police footage, TV archive and interviews with lawyers representing the miners in the ensuing commission of inquiry into the massacre. What emerges is a tragedy that arises out of the deep fault lines in South Africa's nascent democracy, of enduring poverty and a twenty year old, unfulfilled promise of a better life for all. A campaigning film, beautifully shot and sensitively told with a haunting soundtrack, "Miners Shot Down" reveals how far the African National Congress has strayed from its progressive liberationist roots.

Co-sponsored by Illuminations, CGPACS, Department of History, School of Law and Program in African American Studies.