Cry Freedom

Shazaam doesn't exist.

No footage, no poster, no reviews, no listing in any film database, and Sinbad himself had been denying it for years.

It didn't matter.

That December, a journalist named Amelia Tait published an investigation in the British magazine The New Statesman interviewing believers who were certain they'd seen it, and their memories weren't vague.

Picture the wicked queen in Disney's Snow White standing before her mirror.

Now, say the line.

If you said, "Mirror, mirror on the wall," you're with most of the world, but the line in the film is actually, "Magic mirror on the wall." I know.

And while we're at it, Darth Vader never says, "Luke, I am your father." The line is actually, "No, I am your father." So what's going on here? For years, skeptics had a one-word answer: memory.

Last week, age 76, one of Britain's seriously most brilliant film composers.

His extraordinary career encompassed more than 100 films, including Gandhi, Cry Freedom, Dangerous Liaisons, The Fisher King, Groundhog Day, but particularly incredible work he did on David Attenborough's Blue Planet and Planet Earth.

Frozen Planet, if you've ever seen any of these, the music is equally as stunning as the visuals.

Five-time Oscar nominee in CBE.

I'm just checking now.

Cry Freedom he was in, was he? Chaplin he was in.

Good night, Mr. Tom, if we cover that as a TV movie.

And the second Dr. Pheebs movie with Vincent Price.

Truly.

And it notes the passing of George Fenton, the incredibly prolific Oscar-nominated composer who scored massive epics like Gandhi, Cry Freedom, and the stunning Blue Planet documentaries, passing away at 76.

It is a sobering reminder that grounds the breathless corporate excitement of new project announcements in the inescapable reality of the passage of time.

The industry is constantly regenerating, but it is built on the shoulders of the talent that came before it.

His work has been a mainstay of BBC programs, from the six o'clock news to Radio 4's PM.

In film, he was nominated for an Oscar four times, including his scores on Gandhi, Dangerous Liaisons, and this from Richard Attenborough's 1987 biopic of the South African activist, Steve Biko, Cry Freedom.

[upbeat music] Thanks for listening to Front Row.

I'm Samira Ahmed, and the producer was Oliver Jones.

I guess the obvious narrative would be that he kind of inspired me to do this, but I I was actually much more inspired by my granddad.

My granddad was a filmmaker and was making films like Gandhi and Cry Freedom, you know, films about human rights.

And so that was my initial pull into this work was that I read this article by Desmond Tutu where he talked about climate as kind of our generation's apartheid.

It's this issue that sort of cleaves the world into between rich and poor, where the poor are facing the worst impacts despite having done the least to cause the problem.

In South Africa, maybe the concept of Bantu education, you know, it made things to do with being Bantu unattractive, you know.

And I remember when I watched Cry Freedom and Denzel Washington was acting as Stephen Biko in that movie.

And, you know...

It made real how Stephen Biko used to identify himself as Bantu Stephen Biko.

It's produced some of the gravest evils of recent times, including Nazism and apartheid.

The title of the film, Cry Freedom, expresses something we all long for.

Whether it's racial and political freedom, as in the case of this film, free speech, free assembly, free worship, a free conscience, or economic freedom and individual freedom, the whole world cries out for freedom.

All these forms of freedom are important, but you can have them all and still be in slavery.

Alternatively, you can have none of them.