De Voortrekkers
| De Voortrekkers | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Harold M. Shaw |
| Screenplay by | Gustav Preller, Harold M. Shaw |
| Produced by | African Film Productions |
| Starring | Dick Cruikshanks Percy Marmont Edna Flugrath Harold M. Shaw Goba |
| Cinematography | Henry Howse |
Release date |
|
Running time | Approximately two hours in full original cut; 54 minutes in later releases to foreign cinemas |
| Country | South Africa |
De Voortrekkers is a 1916 silent film recognized as the first epic in South Africa's motion-picture history and also that nation's oldest surviving feature film.[1] Produced by African Film Productions and directed by Harold M. Shaw, it portrays the Boers' "Great Trek" of the 1830s, concluding with a hegemonic recreation of the Battle of Blood River that occurred on 16 December 1838, when a few hundred armed Afrikaners defeated several thousand Zulus. Descendants of the Dutch-speaking voortrekkers or "pioneers" who participated in the Great Trek revered the film and used it to commemorate the event, which forms part of a highly contentious period in South Africa's history. Afrikaners presented it in school classrooms for decades and screened it annually at social events marking the battle's anniversary.
De Voortrekkers premiered in South Africa at Krugersdorp on 14 December 1916, just two days before the battle's 78th anniversary. It was later distributed in an abbreviated form to cinemas in England, the United States, Canada, and elsewhere outside Africa under the title Winning a Continent.[2] Intertitles used in the original film and in later releases employ a split-screen format that presents texts in both English and Afrikaans.[3]
References
[edit]- ^ "De Voortrekkers 1916", Africa in Motion Film Festival, screenings at Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Scotland, 4 November 2017; London Castle Cinema, London, England, 9 December 2017. Film distribution by MNet South Africa, Randburg, South Africa. Retrieved 12 August 2021.
- ^ urbanora. "Category Archives: Black cinema". The Bioscope. Retrieved 22 March 2020.
- ^ "De Voortrekkers (1916) with new orchestral score", 19:52 segment of film with added music, uploaded by Chris Jeffrey on 23 February 2017 onto YouTube (San Bruno, California, United States). Retrieved 12 August 2021.
External links
[edit]- De Voortrekkers at IMDb
- Short video from British Pathé (1917) Crowds outside London West End cinema showing Winning a Continent, the movie's title outside Africa
- African Film Festival of Cordoba-FCAT (license CC BY-SA-3.0)[dead link]
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