Award-winning Xhosa-language film uCarmen eKhayelitsha got another honourable mention on Wednesday, in Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s Budget speech.
In his opening remarks, he said the world had acclaimed the film, which won a Golden Bear award at the weekend as the best film at the Berlin Film Festival.
South Africa had also recently celebrated the international success of Ladysmith Black Mabazo’s new album, Lift Your Spirit Higher, Manuel said.
”It is entirely fitting that the new season of hope and rising confidence of our nation, in this second decade of democracy, should be proclaimed in this way, in music and theatre,” he said.
Manuel mentioned uCarmen again later in his speech, in the context of the government’s housing and community development plans.
”If Sophiatown, in the midst of its destruction fifty years ago, could give birth to the rhythms of kwela, the patha-patha jive, the musical genius of Miriam Makeba and Kippie Moeketsi’s Shantytown Sextet … how much more will be possible as the shadows come to life in District Six, Marabastad and Cato Manor, and as the new
spirit of uCarmen eKhayelitsha emerges in Botshableo, Motherwell and Chatsworth?” – Sapa