Come Back, Africa

This article is written like a personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (November 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Come Back, Africa
Directed by	Lionel Rogosin
Written by	Lionel Rogosin Lewis Nkosi William Modisane
Screenplay by	Lionel Rogosin Lewis Nkosi William Modisane
Produced by	Lionel Rogosin
Starring	Vinah Makeba Zachria Makeba Molly Parkin Miriam Makeba
Cinematography	Ernst Artaria Emil Knebel
Edited by	Carl Lerner
Music by	Lucy Brown, Chatur Lal
Distributed by	Lionel Rogosin Films[1]
Release date	1959 (1959)
Running time	83 minutes
Countries	South Africa United States
Language	English

Come Back, Africa is a 1959 film, the second feature-length film written, produced, and directed by American independent filmmaker Lionel Rogosin. The film had a profound effect on African cinema, and remains historically and cultural importance as a document preserving the heritage of the townships in South Africa in the 1950s. It may be classified as reportage, documentary, historical movie or political cinema, since it portrays real events and people. It reveals an interpretation of meaningful social facts and a strong ethical assumption towards human behaviours like racism.

Like Rogosin's feature debut On the Bowery, Come Back, Africa is a scripted film based on fictional narrative, in which actors play invented roles. However, unlike mainstream films and against Hollywood traditions, its actors are street people, improvising lived experiences: they play their own lives or those of people like them. That is why Come Back, Africa is a fiction / non-fiction, a hybrid of fictional film and documentary: a docufiction. Additionally, it is a rare combination in film history of docufiction and political film.

Both Lionel Rogosin in America and Jean Rouch in France, at the same time, considered themselves as Robert Flaherty's heirs for similar reasons. Both used amateur actors, "street people" playing their own roles in search of truth or to unveil some hidden mystery beyond crude reality: Rogosin, contrary to Flaherty, sustained by strong ideological beliefs, Rouch, beyond Flaherty, inspired by surrealism, which he believed to be a useful means to reveal the truth of cinema'’ (the cinéma-vérité) and also an important tool to be used by an ethnographer for scientific research. Following different paths to reach similar results, both converged in ethnofiction with surprising results (See: Glossary).