"Promised Land" Screening - Jan 13, 6:30pm

MonkeyWrench presents the 2010 documentary "Promised Land," in partnership with the award-winning documentary series P.O.V.

"Promised Land" tells the story of two bellwether legal struggles over land in today’s South Africa. With behind-the-scenes access to landless blacks, white landowners and beleaguered government functionaries, Promised Land is a gripping insider’s account of the social and human stakes in South Africa’s struggle over land. An impoverished community seeks the return of 42,000 acres of rich farmland now in the hands of white farmers and developers; in the other, an extended, middle-class black family claims 3,800 acres owned by a few white farmers.

White landowners, whose deeds and bills of sale buttress their passionate belief that they should not be made to pay individually for the collective crimes of apartheid. The contradiction in government policies, a compromise strategy meant to appease white fears during the transition to democratic rule, has worked out mostly to the disadvantage of black South Africans. A decade and a half after the inauguration of black majority rule, less than 5 percent of the land has been redistributed. Promised Land is a timely alert that the patience of South African blacks, waiting for economic as well as political enfranchisement, is running out — that the hour hand has advanced dramatically on South Africa’s “ticking time bomb.”

This event is is a collaboration with the award-winning PBS documentary series P.O.V. (www.pbs.org/pov).