New documentary ?This is National Wake?

Guitarist and songwriter Ivan Kadey didn?t set out to form South Africa?s first multiracial punk band, but from the moment he met brothers Gary and Punka Khoza it was clear what a potent combination they would make. In the late Seventies, under the apartheid system of institutionalised racial oppression that kept white and Black South Africans apart, the group?s very existence would prove explosive. ?Just standing up and making music together was a political statement,? explains Kadey, now 70, speaking over video call from his current home in Los Angeles. ?We were for a non-racial, peaceful South Africa and just by getting up and performing we stood for that. On many levels, it was a f*** you to the system.?

He already had the perfect name for this band of outlaws: National Wake. At the time the country was under the rule of the right-wing National Party, so by calling themselves National Wake they were both urging their country to wake up from the nightmare of segregation and promising to celebrate its demise. ?We were saying: ?Let?s dance on the corpse of apartheid,?? explains Kadey. ?The name was a pure agitprop statement, as was the very composition of the band.?

Steeped in never-before-seen Super 8 footage, 'This is National Wake' journeys into the kaleidoscopic world of an outlaw multiracial rock band, in apartheid-era South Africa, whose members battled a racist system to taste freedom.