My Song Goes Forth

My Song Goes Forth also known as Africa Sings, Africa Looks Up, U.K., 1937, is the first documentary about South Africa as apartheid was being imposed. The film features singer, actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson singing the title song and adding a prologue that asks the viewers to interpret the remainder of the film against the producers intentions. Alternately entitled Africa Sings, the initial purpose of the film was as a prowhite supremacy shortsubject documentary which serves as an advertisement for the birth of apartheid in South Africa but with a conflicting message in the voiceover. Primarily the documentary has been associated with Robeson and early AntiApartheid activism due to his reediting and rewriting of the films narration.

Hired by the director Joseph Best, Robeson worked carefully to revise the films prologue and in the final version says,Every foot of Africa is now parceled out among the white races. Why has this happened? What has prompted them go there? If you listen to men like Mussolini they will tell you it is to civilize a divine task, entrusted to the enlightened peoples to carry the torch of light and learning, and to benefit the African people... Africa was opened up by the white man for the benefit of himself to obtain the wealth it contained. Despite the then radical narration, Best was unable to find an audience for the film, so he reedited the content, carefully not showing poor whites along some of the more prosperous black townships that had been featured in the first cut. He did keep Robesons narration but removed parts of it to seem less controversial and more mainstream. ........

Source: Wikipedia