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.
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Reviews
If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.