Marigolds in August

An examination of the 'invisibility' of blacks in South Africa caused by conditioned white indifference; an invisibility which means poverty and unemployment. The film is set in and around Schoenmakerskop, an opulently sleepy, immaculately manicured whites-only seaside hamlet just outside Port Elizabeth, scriptwriter Athol Fugard's home town. Its central characters all have their real-life counterparts: Daan (Ntshona), the crafty, suspicious but fundamentally good-natured jobbing gardener, jealously protecting his economic lifeline; Melton (Kani), desperately and stubbornly courageous as he searches for work; and Paulus Olifant (Fugard), a nomadic snake-catcher, scavenger and bush-philosopher. All, in one way or another, are outlawed by white society, and gradually realise that this makes them brothers. A powerful, pessimistic, but bracing film.