After a successful festival run in 2020 and 2021, picking up four awards along the way, including Wales International Film Festival 2021 – Best Documentary, District Six Rising from the Dust is now available on Prime Video across Africa, after a long wait by the South African public to watch the film.
Prime Video is an American video on demand streaming service of amazon.com with an estimated 117 million subscribers worldwide.
District Six Rising from the Dust is a multiple-award winning, feature documentary of 62 minutes which unpacks the art, history and social landscape of Cape Town’s most remembered district. It is currently the only documentary of its kind which details the decades of history about District Six from the 1960’s to 2019 and is presented from the POV of one whose ancestors have been dispossessed. It is estimated that approximately 60 000 t0 80 000 people were forcibly removed from District Six.
“One of those families’ is my own. My mother, Nazley Hartley in her late teens was forcibly removed with her parents, siblings, uncles, aunts and grandparents. A “tribe”, a community uprooted from their homes and businesses of four generations. This painful chapter of our family’s history was never told to me until I undertook making this documentary. Previously my mother only spoke of her happy memories of District Six.” says Williams.
Weaam Williams’ District Six WINS big at the Wales International Film Festival
Director Weaam Williams via her company, Tribal Alchemy Productions, a boutique Cape Town based family business, worked on the award-winning documentary for six years with her spouse, Nafia Kocks as the Director of Photography. He was able to capture intimate moments of this autobiographical film. During this time, she lived in a house in District Six, restituted to her grandfather where she came to understand and document the many challenges facing this new fledgling community. Throughout that time, it has been the story of District Six and the atrocities of the Group Areas Act that pushed Weaam to continue despite the violations she and her family faced living in the neighbourhood. Her ancestral story is like many others, but by adding her personal tale into the documentary, it elevated the film to another level.
Weaam has found her voice as a woman and activist using cinema. She, is a multi-disciplinary artist who works with poetry, music and film.
The documentary is a compilation of Weaam’s personal story. Through commentary, interviews, archival footage, and traditional cultural events, she gives us a unique inside look into a community’s fragmentation and re-emergence.
Image Courtesy: Supplied