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It premiered at the National Festival of the Arts in Grahamstown and is about two brothers and their fate during apartheid. Nothing But the Truth was Kani's first solo play. In 1987 Kani played the title role in William Shakespeare's play Othello in his home country. His younger brother was shot dead by the South African police in 1985 while he was reading a poem at a funeral speech for a young girl. Kani received death threats, was ambushed and injured by eleven knife stabs.
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In South Africa during the apartheid era, this was a taboo - half of the audience left the hall. In 1982, he played in Cape Town the play Miss Julie, in which he kissed a white woman. In 1977 he began working with the Market Theater in Johannesburg. In 1976, he toured Australia and worked with Aboriginal theater groups in several cities. After his return he was briefly detained. Kani also appeared internationally with his pieces, from 1974 in New York, where he and Ntshona received a Tony Award for best leading actor for Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and The Island in 1975. For his role in My Children My Africa! he was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award. In the early 1970s he wrote the plays Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and The Island - The Island is set on the prison island of Robben Island with Athol Fugard and his school friend Winston Ntshona. After attending high school, he became a member of The Serpent Players theater company in Port Elizabeth in 1965. As a metaphor for the traumas of our country it may well be prophetic" Cape Times, South Africa.John Kani was born in New Brighton, a township near Port Elizabeth. " Has the psychic power of a strange and terrible dream.The film's strength is in the moment where man stands against the environment" Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden There is an emotional tension of classical tragedy" Weekend Australia " Provides the exhilaration of a drama well spun.
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Black in the Ingrid Bergman part" Filmworld, Canada " ' The Grass Is Singing' is a Third World 'Stromboli' with K.Raeburn has brought it all together very well and created a succint and very interesting film" BBC " The atmosphere evoked is one of considerable tension.One of the few films which treats Africa not as a political problem or a suitable location for racey adventure, but as an environment that dictates the human drama of its inhabitants" Daily Mail, UK " John Thaw - a superb, unstinting performance." A film Peter Weir might have made had not Michael Raeburn got there first" New Musical Express.script and direction capture the quality of Lessing's best writing" Time Out " This dramatically potent adaptation has visual authenticity.Michael Raeburn directs with an appropriate mystical edge" The Guardian, UK
#John kani the grass is singing full
full of fine, barbed meditations on barbarism, both black and white" Financial Times " Doris Lessing is a novelist of distinction, how reassuring to find hertalent positivley shining forth from The Grass Is Singing" Daily Telegraph, UK." Location footage is stunning in this handsome, high-quality production" Variety." Shows us the African landscape in a hundred exquisite details and large panoramas, and the screen is so filled with light and movement that I had the feeling I could walk right in it".Black gives her finest performance tracing the sexual repression and despairing angers of a woman on the edge" Judith Crist, WOR-TV " Director Raeburn has elicited understated, finely tuned performances" Steven Holden, New York Times." Brilliantly reflects the uncommon intensity and insight of Doris Lessing's work" Judy Stone, San Francisco Chronicle.It ends on a note of authentic ambiguity that few films attain" Kelvin Thomas, Los Angeles Times The film takes us into a world as beautiful as it is harsh, and we can all but feel the heat that's so unbearable. " Karen Black triumphs in one of the most demanding roles of her career.SAN FRANCISCO, TORONTO, LONDON, CAPE TOWN "BEST FILM" SYDNEY. " Karen Black is excellent as a lonely woman who marries farmer John Thaw and cannot adjust to life in the African woodland" *** - Leonard Maltins's Guide. Starring : KAREN BLACK, JOHN THAW, JOHN KANIĭistribution: International cinema and television Production: SFI, Sweden & ITM, London & Chibote Ltd, Zambiaīased on the novel by DORIS LESSING (Nobel Laureate)