Shot in New York, Cape Town, and St Helena, Sathima’s Windsong is a lyrical portrait of South African jazz singer Sathima Bea Benjamin.

In her Chelsea Hotel apartment, home for over thirty years, she patches together her journeys, from apartheid’s ‘pattern of brokenness’, to a chance meeting and recording with Duke Ellington in Paris, to making a life in New York.

The narrative of her journeys are inter-woven with her music and the musings of folks who know her work.

Like her haunting song, Windsong, the film is a meditation on displacement, exile and belonging.

Directed by Daniel Yon.

Word of Mouth and Surplus Radical Bookshop are proud to present The Big Sound Film Festival, a month-long celebration of South African Jazz and Resistance, taking place every Monday in November at the Bertha House Bioscope, Mowbray.

Running from 3 – 24 November 2025, the festival will feature a powerful lineup of documentary and narrative films that spotlight the rich and often underrepresented legacy of South African jazz and its intersections with political resistance and memory.

Event Details:
Venue: Bertha House Bioscope, Mowbray
Dates: Every Monday — 3, 10, 17, 24 November 2025
Time: 6:30 PM
Admission: All screenings free to attend, with RSVP required via Quicket.