The Incredible Journey of Freddy Reddy
Date
2006-11-16T07:53:47Z
Authors
Lauf, Kyle Radford
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Abstract
This is an historical documentary about an individual’s remarkable journey, one which
starts in Durban in 1957 and ends with the protagonist’s arrival in London later the same
year before he would subsequently move to Oslo in 1961. The documentary is intended
primarily for a South African television audience. As such, it is a history to be
apprehended visually rather than in writing, and to a large and heterogeneous, though
primarily South African audience.
The documentary is actually about two journeys: the physical overland African passage
to Europe with its various episodes, and the journey of an ambitious young adult from a
humble and disadvantaged background with only a primary school education. It
culminates with him gaining acceptance for study of medicine at a Norwegian university,
where he would eventually qualify as a doctor and later as a psychiatrist. Though set
against the backdrop of the emerging political opposition to apartheid, the documentary is
a somewhat depoliticised personal history – the biographical narrative of an old man who
accomplished something in his youth which altered his whole life.
It is not primarily a political history, nor is it a narrative about the experience of exile.
The documentary attempts to locate a historical and spatial context from where the
protagonist emerged, but does not attempt to portray the history of South African Indians
as a racial or cultural group, per se.
Description
Student Number : 0318263P -
MA research report -
Faculty of Humanities
Keywords
history, documentary, historical, visualizing the past, film, South Africa