Saving Soweto
View this 8-part documentary series online
Left Hand Films, in collaboration with Fort Greene Filmworks, has produced an eight-part documentary series, Saving Soweto, on the world’s largest hospital, Chris Hani Baragwanath (Bara), in South Africa’s largest township, Soweto.
The series walks in the shoes of various doctors, nurses and staff who work tirelessly, and with little reward, to save human lives under difficult circumstances. The hospital acts as a microcosm for many of the social problems that South Africa is grappling with today. The series will be broadcast on Al Jazeera English.
Left Hand Films believes that what it has filmed at Bara, and the stories the series portrays, is a fair reflection of what is going on at the hospital as well as in South Africa in general. In particular, Left Hand Films looks at social violence and trauma (seen in Episode 1, 24 hours of Trauma), as well as the burden that HIV and AIDS has placed upon the healthcare system countrywide (Episodes 2, Overload, 3 From the Cradle to the Grave and 7 Pandemic). This eight-part series also highlights the warmth, compassion and tireless efforts of the staff at the hospital.
The company would like to extend its gratitude to both the staff and patients at Bara who trusted Left Hand Films to tell their various stories. The experience was an extraordinarily humbling one. During the shoot, the crew was touched on a daily basis by unsolicited acts of kindness by a nurse or by a member of the public who allowed Left Hand Films to document a normally private and intimate moment with his/her doctor.
“Despite the often difficult circumstances,” says Lisa Henry, director/producer of Left Hand Films, “the whole experience had a strangely inverse effect on me and I am more proudly South African than ever before, despite witnessing first hand some terrible scenes.”
Left Hand Films also thanks the commissioning editor at Al Jazeera English, Head of Current Affairs Mike Dillon, for backing a project such as this one.
See Frontline Club’s coverage here.
