Jonas Gwangwa

Movies

Sophiatown
Himself
Little Bird's first South African production, SOPHIATOWN has won the award for Best Documentary at the Cape Town World Cinema Festival 2003. SOPHIATOWN celebrates the great popular jazz music of the 1950's in South Africa; a rich tradition deserving international attention. Director Pascale Lamche, traces the music, uncovers the artists who created it and the unique culture in which it thrived, concentrated in Sophiatown, Johannesburg's own Harlem, which fuelled by liberation politics until its destruction by the Apartheid regime. The film features Nelson Mandela and such household names from the jazz world as Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba, Abdullah Ibrahim, Jonas Gwangwa and Caiphus Semenya.
Cry Freedom
Original Music Composer
A dramatic story, based on actual events, about the friendship between two men struggling against apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s. Donald Woods is a white liberal journalist in South Africa who begins to follow the activities of Stephen Biko, a courageous and outspoken black anti-apartheid activist.