Black and White in South Africa
1957 · 29m · Canada
Directed by John Howe, Ronald Dick
Genres: documentary, essay film, historical
Tones: contemplative, provocative
South Africa's apartheid policy is appraised in 1957, weighing the motivations behind segregation and whether it can serve as a lasting solution in a country where four of five people are Black.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A mid-century doc that *tries* to interrogate apartheid but can't quite escape its own paternalism—the real subversion would've been letting the film collapse under the weight of that contradiction, but instead it settles for measured handwringing.
Howe and Dick position this essay film in a vital documentary lineage, where formal restraint and structural argument carry the moral weight; the 1957 moment—that precise historical juncture—makes the considered tone feel almost elegiac.
The choice to frame apartheid as a 'solution' being weighed in real time, rather than condemned from the present, is a gutsy editorial stance that forces viewers into active interpretation instead of passive agreement.