Saturdays are for the Dead
Netherlands, 2006, 50 mins
Director: Lies Niezen, Lee-Ann Cotton
1:00pm, Sun, Nov 4
at Metro
Festivals
- Winner of the FNAC Award for the Best African Documentary
Description
Between four and six million South Africans, out of a total population of 46 million, have AIDS, and the number of infected increases every day.
Saturdays Are for the Dead offers a remarkable and courageous view of the tragedy and scale of the South African AIDS epidemic from the unusual perspective of some of the hundreds of undertakers that have sprung up in the country in response to the epidemic.
The scenes of chaos and confusion as the undertakers try to cope with the hundreds of funerals held every week in the monumental Avalon Cemetery of Soweto, which grows
bigger and bigger, reveal the depth of the AIDS tragedy and its impact on the nation in a way that is at once unsettling, moving and unique.