IAFilm Productions

Independent Alternative Film
  Home > 4. Golden Age of Super-8 1977 - 1995 > 1. Amandla Protests 1981.htm

Short Films: Amandla - the anti-apartheid protests, NZ, 1981
Also acts as a demo of "green computing" video delivery from a low power consumption server - see below for more details.

"Amandla" Excerpt (3 min)

 

John Calder, Ralph Taylor, Peter Hassall and others, 1982, 23 min.

Winner "Silver Award for Super-8", Philadelphia International Film Festival, 1985.

"Amandla is an on the spot documentary which focusses on the protestors involved in the NZ vs Springboks Rugby tour of 1981.  The emphasis is not on the politics of the protest (although John Calder obviously takes the point of view of the protesters) but rather on the human interest side of any demonstration..."  ... 
"...interesting because of its intention.  Rather than focus on the mob, the emphasis is on the individuals that make up such crowds, everyday people who are compelled to protest over human injustice."
Nadine Myatt writing in "FILMVIEWS", magazine of the Federation of Film Societies, Victoria, Australia, issue 128, 1986.

"Green Computing" demo
This website has experimental hosting on a "Raspberry Pi" micro computer with very economical power consumption. "Pi" idles at 4 W and peaks at about 10 W. The previous server was a recycled PC that idled at 40 W, so a 90 percent energy saving here. There is a lot of talk in the computer industry about "Pi" as a boutique server - but right here, right now you are seeing practical work on "Pi" with a complex real website as a test case. Serving video is a "big ask" for this unit, and this is a big video file of 150 Meg. Therefore (1) getting this to play and (2) being able to navigate the timeline to play any part of it, aka "scrubbing", are impressive if they work - testing time!

For the techies: This website was started pre-2010 using Microsoft WebForms, which is programming that is highly incompatible with the Linux-loving "Pi". Hence migration to the latest Microsoft programming, "ASP.NET Core 5", which is designed to run well on Linux and therefore makes it on to the "Pi".
Example challenge: the original website had a Microsoft SQL Server (MSSQL) database. MSSQL now runs on Linux - yay! Except when the device has an "ARM" processor which is the power saving silicon chip that the "Pi" uses - oooh!. I needed to convert the database to "SQLite".