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themes AND FOCUS AREASAfrica's LOST ClassicsThough younger than many other film industries, cinemafrom Africa has thrilled and inspired through its diversity,innovation and creativity ever since home-grown industriesstarted to develop after the independence of Africancountries. However, it is a sad fact that the dark years of apartheid severely hampered thediversity of South African voices to emerge in the film industry, and that it likewise limitedthe opportunities and possibilities for South African cinema to be part of the developmentof post-independence cinemas across the continent. The post-apartheid era has providedus with the benefit of hindsight to recover some of the classics of critically engaged antiapartheidcinema, and to explore some of the most innovative and astonishing pioneeringwork of African cinema, not accessible to South African audiences at the time of their release.This is exactly what this series of African classics at DIFF sets out to do.The screenings will be accompanied by discussions with experts on African cinema:to reconsider the position of South African film in the history of African cinema as awhole, and to shine a light on the work of directors who have always swum against thetide of aesthetic conformity and political complacency. The screenings will be furthercomplemented by the South AfricanMapantsula launch of Africa’s Lost Classics: NewHistories of African Cinema, edited byAfrican film scholars Lizelle Bisschoffand David Murphy – a new book thatseeks to uncover some of the hiddengems of African cinema. The booklaunch and reception is sponsored byM-Net in collaboration with the Africain Motion Film Festival, an annualAfrican film festival based in Scotland(www.africa-in-motion.org.uk).Come Back, Africa, a unique and veryspecial historical document of its time,a classic masterpiece of docu-fictionthat emphatically depicts the hardshipsand injustices that Black South Africans1636th Durban International Film Festival