We Are Zama Zama(2021)
In South Africa’s abandoned mines, men scrabble for gold, using hand hammers and bicycle head-lamps, often remaining underground for days, often without food. Their survival is dependent on their hands – and luck. They are gamblers, or Zama Zama, who hope to scrounge a living from exhausted veins despite crumbling mineshafts and criminal overlords because at home in Zimbabwe they have nothing, there is nothing. The video footage is shot by miners with GoPros and in spite of harrowing conditions, we see uplifting camaraderie, caring collaboration and inspiring good cheer, as we are taken into their subterranean lives, guided by director-producer-anthropologist Rosalind Morris. Above ground, they smile. Gangsters prey on them, and the women cough from the glass-like dust of the rocks they crush by hand. But still they smile. An extraordinary story of human endurance, not to be missed.
Movie: We Are Zama Zama

We Are Zama Zama
HomePage
Overview
In South Africa’s abandoned mines, men scrabble for gold, using hand hammers and bicycle head-lamps, often remaining underground for days, often without food. Their survival is dependent on their hands – and luck. They are gamblers, or Zama Zama, who hope to scrounge a living from exhausted veins despite crumbling mineshafts and criminal overlords because at home in Zimbabwe they have nothing, there is nothing. The video footage is shot by miners with GoPros and in spite of harrowing conditions, we see uplifting camaraderie, caring collaboration and inspiring good cheer, as we are taken into their subterranean lives, guided by director-producer-anthropologist Rosalind Morris. Above ground, they smile. Gangsters prey on them, and the women cough from the glass-like dust of the rocks they crush by hand. But still they smile. An extraordinary story of human endurance, not to be missed.
Release Date
2021-06-11
Average
0
Rating:
0.0 startsTagline
Genres
Languages:
Keywords
Similar Movies

The Klondike Gold Rush(en)
Renowned as the richest gold strike in North American mining history, the Klondike Gold Rush (1896-1899) set off a stampede of over 100,000 people on a colossal journey from Alaska to the gold fields of Canada's Yukon Territory. Filled with the frontier spirit, prospectors came and gave rise to what was one of the largest cities in Canada at that time - Dawson City. The boomtown, which became known as "the Paris of the North", earned the reputation as a place where lives could be revolutionized. Brought to life with excerpts from the celebrated book The Klondike Stampede - published in 1900 by Harper's Weekly correspondent Tappan Adney - and featuring interviews with award-winning author Charlotte Gray, and historians Terrence Cole and Michael Gates, The Klondike Gold Rush is an incredible story of determination, luck, fortune, and loss. In the end, it isn't all about the gold, but rather the journey to the Klondike itself.

River of Gold(en)
Narrated by Academy Award winners Sissy Spacek and Herbie Hancock, River of Gold is the disturbing account of a clandestine journey into Peru's Amazon rainforest to uncover the savage unraveling of pristine jungle. What will be the fate of this critical region of priceless biodiversity as these extraordinarily beautiful forests are turned into a hellish wasteland?

Malartic(fr)
Ten years after an enormous open-pit gold mine began operations in Malartic, the hoped-for economic miracle is nothing more than a mirage. Filmmaker Nicolas Paquet explores the glaring contrast between the town’s decline and the wealth of the mining company, along with the mechanisms of an opaque decision-making system in which ordinary people have little say. Part anthropological study, part investigation into the corridors of power, Malartic addresses the fundamental issue of sustainable and fair land management.

Mountain of Gold(ha)
Gold fever has gripped northern Niger. In search of the precious metal, and despite the risks, an army of researchers has invaded the sites of interest. While camps are set up and dismantled as rumours of new leads spread, Moussa and his companions are banking on the Ikazan vein.

Holding Up The Sky(fr)
"When the shamans stop dancing and life in the rainforest loses its balance, the sky will collapse and come to crush everything." This wisdom is passed down from generation to generation by the Yanomami of Brazil. But gold miners are polluting the rivers, shamans are dying, the rainforest is disappearing and the earth is getting hotter. Davi Kopenawa, a tribal leader and spokesman for the Yanomami, has been fighting relentlessly against the colonization of his land for 40 years. He warns Westerners that when the sky collapses, they too will be crushed. Why don't they listen? Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Great Day in the Morning(en)
After a card game, Southerner Owen Pentecost finds himself the owner of a Denver hotel. Involved with two women, he then has to make even more fundamental choices when, with the start of the Civil War, he becomes one of a Confederate minority in a strongly Unionist town.

Virgil Abloh: How To Be Both(en)
Film exploring the life of legendary designer Virgil Abloh. It tracks his spectacular ascent from Kanye West’s right-hand man to his role as artistic director of menswear at Louis Vuitton.

The Era of Giants(it)
Italian documentary illustrating the xylella virus devastation of the olive-growing flora in Apulia by the xylella virus. In Apulia, a region in south-eastern Italy, the most serious botanical pandemic of the century is underway: a quarantine bacterium, Xylella Fastidiosa, is killing millions of olive trees. Disrupting landscape, economy and human relations. The Era of Giants narrates Giuseppe’s journey to his father’s land, in the Plain of the Monumental Olive Trees, where the epidemic is imminent. He will have to explain to the old farmer how their lives will be disrupted by this invisible bacterium, hitherto unknown in Italy.

Monterrico Beach Meditation in Guatemala(en)
Watch the waves from above on Monterrico Beach in Guatemala while listening to ambient music from around the world.

State Entry into Delhi of Lord Curzon, the Viceroy(en)
Film showing the Viceregal party entering Delhi on lavishly decorated elephants, as part of the Coronation durbar of 1903.
The Big Brass Ring(en)
George Hickenlooper filmed five pages (two scenes) from Orson Welles' screenplay of "The Big Brass Ring" in 1997 in the hope of attracting interest in the project. The feature film version was released in 1999.

Hacking Justice(en)
Since he took on the case in 2012, defending Julian Assange has put judge Baltasar Garzón's talent and ability to the test. They've won a few battles, but nobody knows how the war will end.

Suppressed 2020: The Fight to Vote(en)
Deeply personal accounts from voters of color across the state of Georgia reveal deliberate, widespread voter suppression in the 2018 midterm election where Stacey Abrams fought to become the first Black female governor in the U.S. Polling place closures, voter purges, missing absentee ballots, extreme wait times and voter ID issues were in full effect again during the 2020 primaries and are on-going across the country right now, all disproportionately affecting Black Americans and minorities from casting their ballots. Now, amidst a global health crisis, the cruel weaponization of vote-by-mail restrictions has turned the constitutional right to vote into a choice between life and death.

Our King Emperor and Queen Empress Hold a Durbar in Delhi(en)
King George V and Queen Mary hold ceremonial court in Delhi.

Invisible Hand(en)
INVISIBLE HAND is a “paradigm shifting” documentary about the creation of ‘Rights of Nature.’ The defining battle of our times where nature, democracy and capitalism face off in rural America. From Executive Producer Mark Ruffalo comes INVISIBLE HAND, the world’s first documentary film on the Rights of Nature Movement. A “paradigm shifting” story about the fate of capitalism and democracy where we find out "Who speaks for Nature?"

Stille Sommer(de)
Escape from everyday life in freedom and community and live utopias - for many organizers and artists, the secret of the music festivals that make culturally weak Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania a place of pilgrimage for tens of thousands of people every summer. But instead of freedom, community and utopia, there was one thing above all in the festival summers of 2020 and 2021: silence.

Hold Your Breath: The Ice Dive(en)
Follow free diver Johanna Nordblad in this documentary as she attempts to break the world record for distance traveled under ice with one breath.

Mesopotamia: The Rise of Cities(fr)
After decades of inaccessibility due to unrest and wars, teams of archaeologists from around the globe return to the greatest sites in Mesopotamia in a bid to save what can still be saved.