Set against South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle, WE ARE NOT AFRAID explores music’s critical role as resistance for political prisoners incarcerated in apartheid prisons over three decades (1960-1990), especially at Robben Island (which held Nelson Mandela for 18 years) and the Johannesburg Women’s Jail. Narrated by former political prisoners, with unseen historical archival footage, it shows how music performance–from indigenous African genres like isicathamiya, maskanda and mbaqanga to Cape jazz, migrant work songs, freedom songs, Western classical, rock, reggae and Indian ragas–provided resistance, community-building, therapy, collective memory, and identity-formation for political prisoners, transcending political, linguistic and ethnic differences to unite an oppressed people against a common enemy. Women’s narratives and songs expose the deadly gender-based violence that underlay structures of state violence and express their fight against both racial and gender oppression and dehumanizing prison experiences, which are historically overshadowed in liberation narratives. Through these resilient individuals, new testimonies and music, the film touches on broader questions about cultural expression as advancing social change and the uses of music by individuals protesting the violation of human rights under oppressive patriarchal regimes at the intersections of music, resilience, power, violence, gender, race, trauma and human rights.

The film excerpt focuses on highlights from the entire film that touch on the intersecting themes as described in the above abstract. The introduction/discussion will focus on South African field methods for capturing survivor/perpetrator testimonies, ethical approaches to ethnographic research and media-making in trauma-related research, and the importance of documenting crimes against humanity.