Amazon.com
Writer, cultural anthropologist, and statesman Laurens van der Post concentrates on his life in South Africa and his time in a World War II Japanese prison camp in this documentary. His family's roots in South Africa go back to his great-grandparents. When they were murdered during an expedition into the country's interior, his young grandmother survived and went on to marry one of her rescuers. As a young journalist Van der Post chafed at the system of apartheid and went on to unsuccessfully fight for the preservation of the bushman culture through a BBC film he made in the Kalahari Desert. That documentary is generously excerpted in this one, and he expands on the experience both with filmmaker Mickey Lemle and in a salon-style gathering in his London apartment. Van der Post also recollects his time as a soldier when he was taken prisoner by the Japanese in Java. A couple of fellow veterans join him in recounting the horrors of their internment and their efforts to start a school for the soldiers during their captivity. Van der Post's eloquent observations on human nature in both situations make this 62-minute film worthwhile. --Kimberly Heinrichs
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