A01=Calum Waddell
Author_Calum Waddell
B-Movies
Category=ATFA
Category=NHTQ
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
film and apartheid
film genre
film history
South African film
ZAxploitation
Product details
- ISBN 9781474450034
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 17 Jul 2023
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Provides the first study of South Africa's B-Scheme cinema
Identifies a South African cinema of low-budget blaxploitation
Features many interviews with South African filmmakers, conducted as part of the research
Provided audiences of the time with unique, apartheid-era adaptations of popular blaxploitation films such as Shaft (1971) and Super Fly(1972)
Images of Apartheid: Filmmaking on the Fringe in the Old South Africa is an exploration of the low budget, black-action cinema that emerged in South Africa during the 1970s and led to subsequent gangster and race-conflict films that defined an era of prolific genre activity, from Joe Bullet (1973) to American Ninja 4 (1990). Contextualising and documenting the cheap, government-funded 'B-Scheme' films, largely unseen since the fall of the National Party, but also acknowledging the impact of international co-productions such as The Wild Geese (1978) and locally made provocation, including the classic Mapantsula (1988), this study is an exhaustive tour of race-representation and state-subsidised subversion. Also discussing the political turbulence of the era, Images of Apartheid argues that so-called 'ZAxploitation' should be considered within both localised and wider international paracinematic networks of genre adaptation, resulting in the identification of a uniquely South African form of trash and treasure, and schlock and awe.
Calum Waddell is a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, where he also received his PhD. His previous work includes The Style of Sleaze, The American Exploitation Film (2018), Images of Apartheid: Filmmaking on the Fringe in the Old South Africa (2021), South African Horror Cinema (2025), and the edited collection The Films of Wes Craven (2023). He has occasionally worked on producing bonus content and documentary work for Blu-ray labels and documented the “gory glory” days of grindhouse cinema with his feature-length nostalgia-trip 42nd Street Memories (2015).
