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Is the movie Cry Freedom a true story?
The premise of Cry Freedom is based on the true story of Steve Biko, the charismatic South African Black Consciousness Movement leader who attempts to bring awareness to the injustice of apartheid, and Donald Woods, the liberal white editor of the Daily Dispatch newspaper who struggles to do the same after Biko is …
What is the movie Cry Freedom about?
Donald Woods is chief editor at the liberal newspaper `Daily Dispatch’ in South Africa. He has written several editorials critical of the views of Steve Biko, but after having met him, he changes his views and attracts attention from the security police. When Steve Biko dies in police custody, he writes a book about Biko. The only way to get it published is for Woods himself to illegally escape the country.Cry Freedom / Film synopsis
What happened to Donald Woods?
Woods was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2000. He was the subject of a This is Your Life programme in 2000, when he was surprised by Michael Aspel. He died of cancer on 19 August 2001 in London.
What was the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa?
The Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) was a grassroots anti-Apartheid activist movement that emerged in South Africa in the mid-1960s out of the political vacuum created by the jailing and banning of the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress leadership after the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960.
Who was Biko in South Africa?
Stephen Bantu Biko
Stephen Bantu Biko was an anti-apartheid activist in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. A student leader, he later founded the Black Consciousness Movement which would empower and mobilize much of the urban black population.
What happened to Biko?
On August 18, 1977, he and a fellow activist were seized at a roadblock and jailed in Port Elizabeth. Biko was found naked and shackled outside a hospital in Pretoria, 740 miles (1,190 km) away, on September 11 and died the next day of a massive brain hemorrhage.
What happened to Donald Woods after he left South Africa?
Donald Woods was one of the banned persons and was effectively placed under house arrest. Returning to his home on the evening of 18 August 1977, from a trip to Cape Town, Biko was arrested, imprisoned and mortally beaten. He was killed on 12 September.