My Song Goes Forth (1937)

My Song Goes Forth (also known as Africa Sings, Africa Looks Up, U.K., 1937), is the first documentary about South Africa as apartheid was being imposed. The film features singer, actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson singing the title song and adding a prologue that asks the viewers to interpret the remainder of the film against the producer's intentions.
Alternately entitled "Africa Sings", the initial purpose of the film was as a pro-white supremacy short-subject documentary which serves as an advertisement for the birth of apartheid in South Africa but with a conflicting message in the voice-over. Primarily the documentary has been associated with Robeson and early Anti-Apartheid activism due to his re-editing and rewriting of the films' narration.

Synopsis

The advance publicity booklet on the film when it was entitled "Africa Sings", touted it as showing "what the white man achieved for himself" and "what he has done for he natives." "Africa Sings" was one of the first documentary films from South Africa to take a look at the lives of South Africans of all races. There are images of location life, schools and colleges, and a cross-section of occupations, from mine-workers to road-gangs, school-teachers to house- servants, waiters to cane-cutters. Mainstream reviewers gave the documentary a tepid response; the London Daily Worker thought it was too bland to serve a staunch liberationist purpose.

Acteurs