ERICA The final frame of A Worlds Apart freezes a township vouth hurling a stone at the South African police, in response to a tear-gas at- tack on the funeral of a black militant killed in The image is a potent one. and has already been silk-screenod onte T-shirts. At the titles come up, the fastionabic audience of a West End cinema expressed its revulsion at the information that Ruth First (Molly's motber, FLEGG detention. the intelligentsia. East and West. Marxists have traditionally argued. they hire an intermediate perty- bourgeois layer and can therefore alien themselves with either the working class or the bourgeoise) and insist upon the leading role of the working class Indeed Kagar- ltsky himselt, as the Co-ordinator of the Federation of Socialist Clubs, gives an example ofthe divided nature of the intelligentsia when he points to intellectuals leading right wing clubs with anti- democratic and anti-semitie politics - Pamvat and Rodina Memory and Homeland) - as well as ich wing clubs. The relation of the intel- ligenisia to the working class is
Page 31 espoused. Slovo's film now emer- African authoritics banned it after direction i that the film moves its: its first public screening: subver- mother Diana. So it is much to sive stuff. They may have killed devices of a Hollywood epic or her credit cand that of Menges' awe of her and the struggle she on Slovos part - she said that Ruth First, but they remain in ges as one of the hydra heads Taking the cue, the South audience without any of the was why she had called her they unleashed. Гедг-зеткот, the character of First remains one- A singular triumph of the film, the black actors - mostly Zimbab- screen experience - bring tremen: to her role - although to my mind two leads arc outstanding, but all wrenching depiction of griet un- who 'parents" Molly) is brought they brings an impressive force however is its African cast. The the news of her brother's fate in dous energy, commitment and detention (Alhee Lesotho) is a maid, played by Linda Mvasi. The scene where Elsic (the weans without any previous human warmht to the story. dimensional touching an audience c emotional politics of the struggle or the rolc side of right against the Goliath ing is not easily achieved, and is spontancous expression of foci- a tribute to the film's success in Party, to which Molly's (Shawn Diana, in the film) had been as- a5 well as political sensibilities. played by the African National The film doesn'1 go into the Nevertheless, the township youth -ahlack David, on the sassinated in 1982, then they In these jaded times, such Congress or the Communist Slovo's) parents belonged. burst into applausc. SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 9 October 1988 working masses in radical change: lectual leads him to ignore the fact perestroika - an attempt to resolve the crisis of burcaucratic planning sages accepts the centrality of the it the expenst of the workers and however, his position as an intel- class. To ignore that difference is that while both