Shot in New York, Cape Town, St Helena and the Atlantic Ocean, Sathima's Windsong, is a lyrical portrait of South African jazz singer, Sathima Bea Benjamin. In her Chelsea Hotel apartment, home for over thirty years, she patches together her journeys, from apartheid's 'pattern of brokenness', to a chance meeting and recording with Duke Ellington in Paris, to making a life in New York. The narrative of her journeys are inter-woven with her music and the musings of folks who know her work. Like her haunting song, Windsong, the film is a meditation on displacement, exile and belonging.
Daniel Yon
Director
The Struggle Continues
1971
Der lange Weg ans Licht
2008
Fold Crumple Crush: The Art of El Anatsui
2010
Memory Books
2008
Les États-Unis d'Afrique
2011
Goodbye Bafana
2007
Congolaise
1950
2 or 3 Things I Know About Him
2005
Lise and Laura
1982
Johnny Mad Dog
2008
White Man with Black Bread
2007
Chasing the Sound
2020