Filmmaker Liza Key dies in South Africa at 71 — Daily Maverick
Liza Key, a documentary filmmaker, former director of the Weekly Mail Film Festival and participant in the development of the Scrawl screenwriting programme, died in South Africa on 11 October at the age of 71. Key, who led the Johannesburg festival for seven years, was reported dead by Daily Maverick.
Festivals against censorship
Key took over the Weekly Mail Film Festival in 1988, a year after it was founded. The festival programme included banned documentaries about the struggle against apartheid, international cinema and restored works from the history of South African filmmaking. The organisers sought permits to screen banned films and exemptions from the Publications Appeal Board.
In 1993, Key and her team organised the Limits of Liberty festival at the Wits Theatre, dedicated to opposing censorship. It was set to screen, among other films, Paul Schrader’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom”. The festival raised questions about the boundaries between what would be permitted and prohibited in a future post-apartheid South Africa.
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Documentary filmmaking and research
After the 1994 elections, funding for the festival ran out, and Key focused on her own documentary projects. She made 10 films, some of them episodes of series. Her 1998 film The Furiosis, which had the greatest impact among her works, told the story of Dimitri Tsafendas, who killed South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd in 1966.
Key also worked on the 2002 film The Man Who Knew Too Much about Wouter Basson, the head of South Africa’s chemical weapons programme, who was acquitted that year. She regularly visited Tsafendas until his death in 1999 and stated in a submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he had been mistreated during his imprisonment.
Key’s final work was research and writing for Mandy Jacobson’s seven-part project The Trials of Winnie Mandela, which was recently shown on Netflix. At the age of 50, she also earned a master’s degree in ethnomusicology.
