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THU 17 AUG
Westbourne Grove Church 7pm

Westbourne Grove (corner of Ledbury Road) London W11

In association with Human Rights Watch Film Festival, Portobello Film Festival proudly presents:

Conversations On A Sunday Afternoon
(South Africa) 15
Directed and written by Khalo Matabane.
Starring Tony Kgoroge and Fatima Hersi.

A fascinating contribution to the rich global trend of blending documentary and fiction, Khalo Matabane's "Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon" begins with one man's curiosity about a lonely woman in a Johannesburg park and expands its scope to include a look at exiles living in South Africa. Matabane cleverly uses his central character, Keniloe, as a device to introduce him to several people with stories about how and why they ended up in Africa's thriving but crime-ridden southern tip.

Like an amateur documentarian, Keniloe gathers a book's worth of accounts of exiles, ranging from a Montenegro woman who fled bombing in Bosnia, to a former Congo presidential guardsman who survived a machete attack. Some, like a Palestinian family separated from their homeland for 35 years, are more or less rooted in Johannesburg; others, like a Ugandan woman living in South Africa for 20 years, never seem to lose their sense of being in exile.

Roving hand-held vid camerawork is extremely fluid and intimate, and the capturing of city life rarely if ever feels staged for effect. Carlo Mombelli's doom-laden jazz score runs against aud expectations of a South African film with typically South African music.

Running time: 79 MIN.