Cape Town and Havana may lie longitudes apart, but both are melting pot ports where sailors, soldiers, traders and slaves have created a fabulous mix of religions and cultures.

Historian and musician Vincent Kolbe and jazz legend Robbie Jansen travel from the Cape to Cuba to explore the island's rich musical heritage and share with it some of their own city's eclectic cultural treasures.

The film follows Jansen as he takes his sax on a tour of Havana's parks, streets, jazz clubs and studios to meet and jam with the city's finest soundsmiths. The result is a highly entertaining introduction to Cuban music - past, present and future - and a deeply personal account of Jansen rediscovering his own wellsprings of creative inspiration.

In 1725, a young Khoi herder Claas Blank is sentenced to hard labour on Robben Island, Cape Town's penal colony. The prison garden is run by Virgil Tyne, an English botanist who is naming and cultivating South African protea species for the European market. Tyne is entranced by the quick-witted Blank, and the youth soon finds ways to manipulate the repressed botanist, exchanging native lore for guilders and favours.

Blank works alongside a Dutch sailor, Rijkhaart Jacobsz, who is serving time for sodomy. Despite mutual prejudices, the two prisoners are strongly attracted to each other and begin a tentative affair, accidentally witnessed by Tyne. Their affair transgresses vast cultural taboos, and unleashes confused feelings of desire and jealousy that neither have a name for. Tyne returns to Amsterdam where his protea schemes fail.

A decade passes, and the prison authorities continue to ignore the ongoing 'friendship' of Blank and Jacobsz. Then Tyne returns to the Cape, fleeing a sodomy scandal in Amsterdam, where 70 men (including his partner Ourens) were tried and executed in the city square. His return is catastrophic, inadvertently triggering the arrest of Blank and Jacobsz on sodomy charges. Tyne makes a desperate intervention to the court, intent on saving Blank, but the herder refuses to play along. When he received news of the destruction of his family in commando raid Blank tells the truth. For the first time he names his feelings for the Dutch sailor. In the process, he condemns them both to death. The two prisoners are drowned off the shores of Table Bay.

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The Beat It! HIV/AIDS Treatment Literacy Series is a unique training resource. The series provides an introduction to the core information you need to respond creatively to people living with HIV/AIDS in your environment. This comprehensive series is designed to support discussions and workshops on HIV/AIDS treatment literacy. It combines personal documentary accounts of people living with HIV/AIDS with expert advice and explanation. The material is presented simply with key points reinforced with text.

Sold non-profit by Idol Pictures on behalf of

Cape Town's District Six was physically destroyed by South Africa's apartheid government in the 1970's. "A NORMAL DAUGHTER, The Life and Times of Kewpie of District Six" recovers much ignored memories of gay life in District Six. Long before the emergence of the post-Stonewall gay scene in Cape Town, life in District Six was open and out - an accepted part of this racially and religiously diverse community. Here gays were known as moffies, and moffie style became part of District Six.

Kewpie's world revolved around her hairdressing salon. From here the 'girls' organised elaborate drag balls, cabaret performances and moffie concerts. They colonised clubs, monopolised the hunckiest guys, prepared food for weddings and funerals, styled everybody's hair and looked after neighbours' children. Kewpie narrates these stories, through her lovingly preserved collection of snapshots, weaving us through District Six, her world and her memories.

"HIV is not a death sentence!" say the HIV positive group from Khayelitsha. They tell their stories in a series of short films which are then screened at taxi ranks and shopping malls in Cape Town's townships. This powerful film about courage in the face of death includes footage of the group process, the short films themselves and their public screenings. They decide to call the film Aluta Continua - The Struggle Continues. While being too young to be part of the struggle against apartheid, they face a new struggle in their lives.

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Blanche La Guma at 75 sparkles with the energy and opinions of someone half her years. In her simple flat in Claremont, Cape Town, she is surrounded by memories of her life with Alex La Guma, who JM Coetzee once called “plausibly…the most substantial writer the Western Cape had produced.” The Blanche La Guma story reveals the relationship between Blanche and Alex La Guma in a life that has been dedicated to ideals which she still holds deeply.

Objective of this documentary
Blanche La Guma is both an internationalist by experience and conviction and a quintessentially Cape Town person. Our goal in this documentary is to paint a picture of Blanche and Cape Town which evokes the city she grew up in, loved and fell in love in and which she was forced to leave for political exile for thirty years.

Blanche’s story shows what it means to be the “women behind the man” – a role she readily admits to, but is critical of in her inimitable way and does not glamorize or romanticize. Blanche speaks openly of the difficulties of providing for and raising a family, being at the call of the movement and trying to realize her own ambitions. It was hard work doing two jobs and caring for two children while Alex was off representing the movement. That “women of the struggle” often had to play this role, and suffer for it, is not openly talked about. Blanche’s character is to be very open in her discussion of these issues. At the same time she clearly appreciates those times when she did get the opportunity to represent the movement directly.

Blanche is a “hero” because without her steadfastness, commitment and love, the literary work of Alex, as well as their joint contribution to the struggle against apartheid, could not have been made in the whole hearted, devoted way in which it was. The history of political struggle is replete with mostly male figures who enjoy the limelight in many ways but whose actions and work were dependent on the support and enabling environment created by their partners. It is rare that we get the opportunity to look at important political life through the eyes of the woman who made it possible. Through My Eyes takes us into this world.

“Ek het nie ma nie, my ma is in die hemel,
Ek het nie pa nie, my pa is in die tronk,
Ek het net drie broers, maar hulle wil nie werk nie,
O, die duiwel maak my hart so seer!”

Introduction: 10 years ago…

In 1993, on the eve of South Africa’s transition to democracy, Zackie Achmat and Jack Lewis made “Die Duiwel Maak My Hart So Seer”. The title came from a song sung by the children of Dammert Street, Bellville South.

Despite the joy of the singing, the song reflected children’s understanding that things were far from perfect in the world as they experienced it. In the 52 minute video, children from four different communities – Bellville South, Ysterplaat, Khayelitsha (all in Cape Town) and Willows in present day North West Province – talk about things that affect their lives: food, play, care, punishment, violence … and they dream about what they want to be one day.

10 years later, we go back to discover what has happened in their lives. The Devil Breaks My Heart – Ten Years Later is a unique opportunity to take four families from very different backgrounds - urban coloured; informal settlement African; urban white working class and rural African, and in a very personal way, investigate the impact of democracy on South Africa’s children.

We want to follow up on key children who appeared in the 1993 programme and explore how they have grown up in the new South Africa. The Devil Breaks My Heart – Ten Years Later, provides a unique opportunity to create a video snapshot of how a diverse group of ordinary young South Africans have experienced the journey from the eve of first democratic election in 1994 to today.