WHY THE RELEASE OF THE DIGITALLY ENHANCED DIRECTOR'S CUT OF SARAFINA !
South Africa's struggle for democracy was characterized by people of all walks of life coming together to oppose the apartheid regime.  One of the most vociferous opponents of apartheid was the youth. When high-school students in Soweto started protesting for better education on 16 June 1976, police responded with teargas and live bullets.
In celebration of the 30th Anniversary of the Soweto Uprising on 16 June 1976, the digitally enhanced Directors' Cut of the film, Sarafina! will be released as a tribute to all those that gave their lives for the struggle.
The most important reason for the release of the Directors' Cut of Sarafina!  is to ensure that the youth of today are able to experience, through the film, the hardship and subjugation that South Africans endured during the apartheid years.  The film will sensitize the youth to the struggle and give them an opportunity to appreciate our freedom and how it was achieved, especially the impact of 16 June 1976 on the path to freedom and democracy. The release of Sarafina! commemorates this watershed event in the history of South Africa and honours all the young people who lost their lives in the struggle against Apartheid and Bantu Education.

FACTS ON THE FILM SARAFINA !
· Sarafina! was the first South African film to be made in the country after the unbanning of the African National Congress and the release of Nelson Mandela from 27 years in prison. 
· The film was a tribute to Mr Mandela who was the inspiration for the main character in the film Sarafina, played by Leleti Khumalo.  Mr Mandela was Guest Of Honour at the South African premiere of the film when it was released in 1992. Also in attendance was Oliver Tambo and President Mbeki.
· Sarafina! is the highest selling video of a South African Musical/Drama of All Time
· The soundtrack of Sarafina! is the highest selling South African Film Soundtrack of All Time

MBONGENI NGEMA
Mbongeni Ngema was born in 1955 In Verulam, South Africa.  Separated from his parents at the age of 11, he lived for a while with his extended family deep in rural Zululand, and then on his own in the ghettoes around Durban.  From the age of twelve inspired by his father he taught himself to play the guitar.
Hi pursuit of theatre began when he worked in a fertilizer factory where he was enlisted to play guitar accompaniment for an amateur play which a fellow-worker had written.  One of the actors fell ill and Ngema was asked to replace him.  Later he joined the acting company of the country's then major black theatre innovator and entrepreneur, Gibson Kente. Kente's productions were famous in the black townships but virtually unheard the townships.  Ngema studied Kente's style very carefully and at the same time began to discover the classics of the theatre literature of scholars such as Stanislavsky, Peter Brooke and Grotwski.
He soon broke away from Kente's company with a fellow actor, Percy Mtwa, to write and rehearse a play of their own, a South African treatment of the New Testament, later titled 'Woza Albert!'  After a year and a half of this work, they auditioned the play for the producers of the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, and were accepted.  Barney Simon, The Market Theatre's Artistic Director at that time, became their director. 'Woza Albert!' eventually toured the United States and the rest of the world and won awards internationally. 
Between the legs of the tour, Ngema founded his company, Committed Artists, and began to work on his next piece, 'Asinamali', which he wrote and directed on his own with a company of five inexperienced young men whom he rigorously trained as actors. 'Asinamali,' structured around a real-life event (a critical rent strike in a black township near Durban) played at the Market Theatre, toured South Africa, and then on to the Roger Furman Theatre in New York City for its American premiere and, for his direction, Ngema was nominated for a Tony Award, the most prestigious stage award in the world.
Following 'Asinamali' was 'Sarafina' which went on to become a major international musical.  Ngema composed the score for this musical with additional songs by Jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela.  After an engagement at the Market Theatre, 'Sarafina' travelled to the Lincoln Centre and then quickly moved to Broadway where it stayed for two years before embarking on a major U.S tour.  In the meantime Ngema assembled a second company in South Africa and sent them on a tour in Europe, Australia and Japan.  The Broadway production was nominated for five Tony awards and the original cast recording was nominated for a Grammy, the world's most prestigious award in the music industry.  'Sarafina' also won eleven NAACP Image Awards.  The film rights to 'Sarafina' was acquired by leading South African Film producer, Anant Sigh and was adapted into a feature film starring Leleti Khumalo, and other key members of the original company, as well as Whoopi Goldberg, Miriam Makeba and Ngema. 
As a composer, Ngema's biggest album in South Africa was 'Stimela Sase-Zola'.  He has written numerous songs, arranged for such artists as Michael Bolton on the soundtrack album for the movie 'Sing' and co-wrote backing vocals for one of 'Third World's albums.  He has also co-written voices for Leleti Khumalo's recording projects with American songwriters and producers.  In 1990, Ngema's major musical, 'Township Fever', about one of the largest and most effective workers' strikes in African history, travelled from the Market Theatre to America.  Also in 1990, Ngema directed his first American work, 'Sheila's Day', co-written by Duma ka Ndlovu, at America's pre-eminent black theatre company, Crossroads Theatre. 
In 1994, Ngema released a song titled 'African Solution' which he wrote for the National Peace Committee with Mfiliseni Magubane.  African Solution won gold and platinum discs.  All the proceeds went to the Peace Committee to help families who were affected by violence, particularly in KwaZulu Natal.  Ngema was one of the vocal arrangers for the Lion King, Disney's animated film.  Ngema received the multi-platinum award for the Lion King for sales in excess of 6 million copies; he was subsequently nominated for a Grammy award for the movie.
In 1995, Ngema wrote, composed, arranged, choreographed and directed 'Mama', a musical about gangsters in Soweto, which was produced by The Playhouse Company and later toured Europe, Australia and New Zealand.  Again in 1995, Ngema presented 'The Best of Mbongeni Ngema' at The Playhouse, which was a compilation of his theatrical works.  Tusk Music also released the 'Best of Mbongeni Ngema' on CD and video.  In 1996, Ngema presented and co-starred in Asinamali at The Playhouse, which won him the FNB-Vita Award for Best Supporting Actor.
In 1997, Ngema wrote, composed, choreographed and directed 'Maria-Maria'.  This was a smash-hit musical, which premiered in Wiesbaden in Germany, toured Germany and Austria and then opened in Durban, South Africa at The Playhouse.  In the same year, 1997, Ngema was appointed to the position of visiting lecturer at the University of Zululand in the Music Department to teach his technique.  The first CD that came out of the University of Zululand's music department was produced by Ngema at Techno Bush Recording Studios with students from the music department and Professor Xulu.  Also in 1997, Ngema composed and produced his hit Solo Album "Woza My Fohloza". A concert tour featuring this song wooed audiences in South Africa.
In 1998, Ngema was inducted in the "Walk of Fame" in front of the Lucille Lortel Theatre in Manhattan, New York City.  His name has been enshrined as one of the greatest theatre writers of the century - the greatest achievement in any artist's lifetime.  'The Zulu' - The Musical Production, the music CD and Cassette are amongst the latest Ngema offerings.  The Zulu opened in Wiesbaden in Germany to rave reviews and standing ovations throughout the tour of Europe.  It came back for a tremendous South African run at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg as well as The Playhouse in Durban in 2000.
To usher in the new millennium, the city of Durban commissioned Ngema to compose and produce the millennium celebration song and also wrote the signature tune for popular South African talkshow, Felicia on e.
Ngema has just completed a movie script for the adaptation of, 'Asinamali' into a feature film.  He was also appointed Artistic Director for the 2003 Cricket World Cup. In 2005, he wrote House of Shaka, a play inspired by the Biography of King Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu, the play staged to wild acclaim by audiences in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.

HUGH MASEKELA
Ever since the day in 1954 when Archbishop Trevor Huddleston gave him his trumpet, Masekela has played music that closely reflects his beginnings as a little boy in Witbank.  The street songs, church songs, migrant labour work songs, political protest songs and the sounds of the wide cross-section of ethnic culture South Africa possesses.  The urban sounds of the townships and other notable South African musicians form an intrinsic part of his musical roots, intertwined with vivid portraits of the struggles and the sorrows, the joys and passions of his country, South Africa.  
After Huddleston asked the leader of the Johannesburg "Native" Municipal Brass Band, Uncle Saude to teach him the rudiments of trumpet playing, Hugh quickly proceeded to master the instrument after having been inspired by the Kirk Douglas film, "Young Man With A Horn".  Huddleston was deported by the racist government of the time for his emancipation militancy and when Hugh kept on badgering him to help him leave the oppressive country for music education opportunities abroad, the priest worked very hard to get him to England.
After playing in other dance bands led by the great Zakes Nkosi, Ntemi Piliso, Elijah Nkwanyana and Kippie Moeketsi, Masekela joined the star studded African Jazz Revenue in 1956.  Following the Manhattan Brothers tour of the country in 1958, he ended up playing in the orchestra for the "King-Kong", South Africa's first blockbuster stage musical written by Todd Matshikiza, with Jonas Gwangwa. The musical later went to London's West End for two years.  At the end of 1959, Abdullah Ibrahim, Kippie, Jonas, Makhaya Ntshoko, Johnny Gertz and Hugh formed Jazz Epistle Verse 1, the first African group to record an LP and perform to record-breaking audiences in Johannesburg and Cape Town in 1959 and 1960.
As the brutality of the Apartheid state increased, Hugh finally left the country with the help of Trevor Huddleston and his friends Yehudi Menuhin and Johnny Dankworth who got him admitted into London's Guildhall School of music.  Miriam Makeba who was already enjoying major success in the USA later helped him with Harry Belafonte, Dizzy Gillepsie and John Mehegan to get admission to the Manhattan school of Music in New York.  Hugh finally met Louis Armstrong who had sent the Huddleston Band a trumpet after Huddleston told the trumpet king about the bank he helped start back in South Africa before deportation. With immense help from Makeba and Belafonte, Hugh eventually began to record, gaining his first breakthrough with "The Americanization of Ooga-Booga" produced by the late Tom Wilson who had been producer of Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel's debut successes. Stewart Levine, his business partner in Chissa Records went on to produce hit records for Hugh on Uni Records, beginning with "Alive and Well at the Whisky" in 1967 and then ""Promise of A Future" which contained the gigantic hit song "Grazing in the Grass" in 1968.
By the beginning of the 1970's he had attained international fame, selling out all of America's festivals, auditoriums and top nightclubs.  Heeding the call of his African roots, he moved to Guinea, then Liberia and Ghana after recording the historical " Home is where Music is" with Dudu Pokwana.
After a pilgrimage to Zaire in 1973, he met Fela in Nigeria and again with Stewart Levine, he met "Hedzoleh Soundz" a grassroots Ghanaian bank Fela introduced them to.  For the next five years they produced a string of ground breaking records, which included international favorites such as "The Marketplace", "Ashiko".  "The Boy'z doin it", "Vasco Da Gama", "African Secret Society" and the evergreen "Stimela".  After a tour and two duet albums with Herp Albert, Hugh and Miriam played a Christmas Day concert in Lesotho in 1980 where 75 000 people came to see them after they had been away for 20 years from the region.  In 1981, Hugh moved to Botswana where he started the Botswana international School of Music with Dr. Khabi Mngona.  His record label Jive Records, helped him to set up a mobile studio in Gaborone where Stewart produced "Techno Bush" from which came the hit single "Don't Go Lose it Baby" in 1986, he unexpectedly had to leave with his band Kalahari for England, his wife Lindi Phahle along with 14 people in the pretext of raiding "communist terrorist camps" manned by South African Anti-Apartheid activists.
While in England, Hugh conceived the Broadway musical "Sarafina" with Mbongeni Ngema which ultimately became a hit film, Sarafina! which starred Whoopi Goldberg and Leleti Khumalo.  He recorded another runaway song "Bring Back Nelson Mandela bring him back home to Soweto" with Kalahari in 1986.  After touring in "Graceland" with Paul Simon, Black Mambazo and Miriam Makeba, Masekela returned home following the un-banning of political parties and the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990.  In 1991, he launched his first tour of South Africa called "Sekunjalo: This is it" with Sankomota and Bayete - it was a four-month tour, selling out in the country's major cities. His recent albums "Black to the Future" and "Sixty" have both gone platinum.
The May 2005 release of "Revival", this latest recording in the acclaimed Heads Up Africa series is a reminder of Hugh Masekela's extraordinary growth and versatility.

SCREENWRITER WILLIAM NICHOLSON
William Nicholson was born in 1948, and grew up in Sussex and Gloucestershire. He was educated at Downside School and Christ's College, Cambridge, and then joined BBC Television, where he worked as a documentary film maker. There his ambition to write, directed first into novels, was channeled into television drama. His plays for television include Shadowlands and Life Story, both of which won the BAFTA Best Television Drama award in their year; other award-winners were Sweet As You Are and The March.
In 1988 he received the Royal Television Society's Writer's Award. His first play, an adaptation of Shadowlands for the stage, was the Evening Standard Best Play of 1990, and went on to a Tony-award winning run on Broadway. He was nominated for an Oscar for the screenplay of the film version of Shadowlands, which was directed by Richard Attenborough and starred Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.
Since then he has written the screenplays of Sarafina!, Nell, First Knight, Grey Owl, and Gladiator (as co-writer), for which he received a second Oscar nomination. He has written and directed his own film, Firelight; and three further stage plays, Map of the Heart, Katherine Howard and The Retreat from Moscow.
His novel for older children, The Wind Singer, won the Smarties Prize Gold Award on publication in 2000, and the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award in 2001. Its sequel, Slaves of the Mastery, was published in May 2001, and the final volume in the trilogy, Firesong, in May 2002.  Upcoming is Elizabeth: The Golden Age for which he co-wrote the screenplay.

DIRECTOR DARRELL JAMES ROODT
Darrell has directed some of the most acclaimed films to come from his native South Africa, including "Place of Weeping," "Sarafina!" and "Cry, the Beloved Country."  He holds the distinction of directing South Africa's first Oscar Nominated film, "Yesterday" which was nominated in the Best Foreign Language category.
After being turned down for Drama School at the University of the Witwatersrand, Roodt secured financing and the commitment of local actors and technicians to produce South Africa's first anti-apartheid feature film, "Place of Weeping" (1986).  Produced by Anant Singh, the film premiered in New York to wide critical acclaim and was endorsed by the "Arts Against Apartheid" committee as a courageous indictment of the racial policies of the time.
Roodt's next two films, "City of Blood" and "A Tenth of a Second" were followed by "The Stick," an anti-war film set and subsequently banned in South Africa for two years. The Stick enjoyed a successful run on the international festival circuit and opened the 1988 Montreal Film Festival.  When finally released in South Africa it was nominated for six awards in the 1989 M-net Film Awards, including Best Film.
Roodt next directed the human drama "Jobman," nominated in six categories in the annual M-net Film Awards, followed by the action thriller "To The Death."
"Sarafina!" (1992), based on Mbongeni Ngema's award-winning Broadway stage hit, and starring Whoopi Goldberg, Leleti Khumalo and Miriam Makeba, introduced Roodt to a wider international audience. Screened in Official Selection at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival, the film was released in the U.S. by Disney, who commissioned him to direct the comedy "Father Hood," starring Patrick Swayze and Halle Berry.
Roodt next adapted Alan Paton's classic novel "Cry, The Beloved Country" (1995) to the screen, with an illustrious cast that included James Earl Jones, Richard Harris and Charles Dutton.  The script was adapted by Oscar nominee Ronald Harwood and scored by five-time Oscar-winner John Barry.
Roodt's subsequent films include "Dangerous Ground" (1997), with Ice Cube and Elizabeth Hurley; the thriller "Second Skin" (2000), with Natasha Henstridge and Peter Fonda, "Queens Messenger II" (2001), "Pavement" (2002), with Robert Patrick and Lauren Holly, "Sumuru" (2003) and upcoming, "Dracula 3000," with Casper Van Dien and Coolio.
Roodt also directed "Faith's Corner" which starred Leleti Khumalo and which is scored by multi-award winner Philip Glass. 
Currently in post production is "Prey" which he co-wrote with the writers of "Cry Wolf", Beau Bauman and Jeff Wadlow. The film stars Bridget Moynahan ("I, Robot", "The Sum Of All Fears", "The Recruit"), Peter Weller of RoboCop fame and Carly Schroeder ("Firewall, Mean Creek").

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